Camp Dwyer—US Marines established bridgeheads in
Taliban strongholds Friday after suffering the first fatality of
their massive offensive against Afghanistan’s hardline militia.
Ferried in by relays of helicopters Thursday, Marines were on the
ground in Helmand province’s districts of Garmsir and Nawa and had
also helped Afghan forces take Khanishin, towards the border with
Pakistan, officers said.
The nearly 4,000 Marines are spearheading US President Barack
Obama’s aggressive new war plan for Afghanistan’s bloody insurgency
with an emphasis on protecting the population ahead of presidential
elections on August 20.
Troops quickly overran Khanishin district, where the Taliban had set
up a proxy government and justice system, within hours of the launch
of the Marines’ biggest operation since Fallujah in Iraq in November
2004.
But they also recorded their first death in an air and land assault
that is one of the biggest joint campaigns in post-Taliban
Afghanistan.
There has been one casualty from hostile fire,’ Marines spokesman
First Lieutenant Kurt Stahl said late Thursday, without giving
details, including the circumstance of the killing.
The helicopter insert has put all troops on the ground now in
Garmsir and Nawa,’ Stahl said, referring to districts that are key
targets of the assault in the desert.
Half of the objectives have been secured by nightfall, ahead of
schedule.
Slight resistance has been met,’ he said. But the Taliban reportedly
dismissed the mobilisation, with the Afghan Islamic Press quoting a
spokesman as saying that previous military operations in vast and
rugged Helmand had not yielded success for the armed forces.
We are resisting but would adopt all kinds of war tactics to the
situation,’ spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi was quoted as telling the
agency.
Taliban’s hardline Haqqani faction meanwhile claimed it was holding
a US soldier who had been missing since June 30, before the current
offensive was kicked off.
We are using all of our available resources to find him and provide
for his safe return,’ US military spokeswoman Captain Elizabeth
Mathias told AFP, declining to go into further detail.
Called Khanjar, which means ‘dagger’ in Dari and Pashtu but was
translated by the Marines as ‘Strike of the Sword’, the new US
offensive also involves about 650 Afghan police and soldiers.
What makes Operation Khanjar different from those that have occurred
before is the massive size of the force introduced, the speed at
which it will insert,’ Marine commander Brigadier General Larry
Nicholson said Thursday.—AFP
