MARJAH,
— Ambushes, sniper fire and a labyrinth of buried bombs again slowed a
drive by U.S. Marines and Afghan troops Monday to rid a former Taliban
stronghold of insurgents.
The arduous pace of progress on the offensive’s
third day appeared to bear out commanders’ predictions that clearing
the town of Marjah, in troubled Helmand province, could take weeks,
rather than days as initially hoped.
The assault on Marjah, one of the war’s largest
battles to date, is aimed at re-establishing government authority in a
swath of southern
Securing Marjah — a farming town of about 85,000
people, which had devolved in recent years into a Taliban fiefdom rife
with narcotics trafficking and bomb factories — is considered pivotal
to that effort.
Inching their way forward through dusty streets,
muddy fields and walled compounds, coalition troops encountered
periodic firefights. Many of the engagements were what the Marines
called “spray-and-pray” episodes, in which the Taliban fired their
AK-47s and quickly fled.
But insurgents also mounted sustained and complex
attacks on some of the advancing forces. Afghan officials on Monday
recounted one particularly audacious Taliban bid a day earlier to
overrun a jointly held Marine and Afghan position, in which a trio of
would-be suicide bombers descended simultaneously on a newly
established outpost.
All were shot to death before they could detonate their explosives, Helmand Gov.
“The operation is going on successfully,” he said.
A number of Taliban fighters are believed to have
fled in advance of the offensive, and even as the fighting continued,
some cars carrying fighting-age men could be seen among civilian
vehicles leaving the town. About 5,000 residents have left their homes,
taking refuge either in
The danger to civilians in the combat zone was
underscored Sunday when NATO announced the deaths of 12 people in what
it characterized as an errant rocket strike that hit a family compound.
Afghan officials said on Monday they were saddened by the incident but
that it should not deter the mission’s larger aim of freeing the area
from Taliban rule.
Interior Minister
“I will quote a part of what they said: ‘We are sad
about civilian casualties, but tens of thousands of people will get
their freedom from this operation, and we want our freedom from these
cruel people,”’ he said.
Atmar also said a preliminary investigation
suggested that several of those killed, as many as three, might have
been insurgents who forced the family living there to let them into the
compound. The NATO force reiterated, however, that the compound that
was hit was not the intended target.
On Monday, NATO’s International Security Assistance
Force said in a statement that the misdirected rockets had missed their
mark by about 600 yards, rather than the 300 yards reported a day
earlier.
U.S. Gen.
expressed regret for the “tragic loss of life” and suspended use of the
rocket system used in the strike, pending the outcome of the
investigation.
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