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Forces claim establishing control on Taliban hideout in Afghanistan

Sunday, February 14, 2010
KABUL: The allied forces have claimed gaining control of a number of areas of Taliban stronghold Marjah as the major offensive against Afghan Taliban enters second day.

In a day of intense but sporadic fighting Saturday, American, Afghan and British troops seized crucial positions across Marjah. As the troops began to fan out on house-to-house searches, fighting with Taliban insurgents grew in frequency across a wide area.

The pattern suggested that the hardest fighting lies in the days to come.

One American and one British Marine were reported killed by small-arms fire, but none in the Afghan army, whose soldiers make up the majority of those in the fight.

Three U.S. soldiers were killed and seven wounded when they were attacked by a suicide bomber on a motorcycle during a foot patrol in neighboring Kandahar province. A second British soldier was killed by a homemade bomb in southern Afghanistan in a blast unrelated to the Marjah operation.

NATO officials said that no civilian casualties had been reported. In the chaos, the claim was impossible to verify.

American commanders said the troops had achieved every first-day objective. That included advancing into the city itself and seizing intersections, government buildings and one of the main bazaars.

Some Marines held meetings with local Afghans almost immediately to reassure them and to ask for help in finding Taliban and hidden bombs.

Mohammed Dawood Ahmadi, a spokesman for Helmand province's governor, said Afghan and NATO forces had set up 11 outposts across Marjah and two in the neighboring town of Nad Ali. "We now occupy all the strategic points in the area," he said.

From those posts, Marines and soldiers began to go on patrols, searching door to door for weapons and fighters. This phase of the operation, considered the most dangerous, is expected to last at least five days. The biggest concern is bombs and booby-traps.

Company K is part of what many Marines call a surge battalion, one of the units assigned to Afghanistan after President Barack Obama decided last year to increase the U.S. troops on the ground. It arrived in Afghanistan a month ago. Its introduction to the war was a crash course.

As the helicopter wheels touched soil Saturday, the aircraft filled with whoops, and the Marines stood and bolted for the tail ramp. They moved briskly. Within minutes, the first Marines of 3rd Platoon were entering compounds, checking for enemy fighters and booby traps. Sergeants and corporals urged a steady pace. "Go! Go! Go!" they said, spicing instructions with profanity. By 3 a.m., Company K had its toehold.

The company's mission was to seize the area around the major intersection in northern Marjah, clear a village beside it and hold it. By drawing this assignment, the company became its battalion's lead unit -- sent alone into Taliban territory. It had been told to hold its area until other companies worked down from the northwest and caught up.

Second Platoon took a position to the west, to block Route 605, a main road. First Platoon was to the east, watching over another likely Taliban avenue of approach. Third Platoon gathered in the southernmost compounds, with orders to sweep north and clear the entire village.

Third Platoon's commander, 1st Lt. Adam J. Franco, ordered a halt until dawn. A canal separated the platoon from the village. Franco chose to cross the canal with daylight, reducing the risks of a Marine stepping on an unseen pressure plate that would detonate an explosive charge.

"Hold tight," he said into his radio. The noncommissioned officers paced in the blackness, counting and recounting every man.

Being the lead company had drawbacks. The Marines had been told that ground reinforcements and fresh supplies might not reach them for three days. As they jogged forward, the men grunted and swore under their burdens, which in many cases weighed 100 pounds or more.

At daybreak, 3rd Platoon bounded across one of its bridges and into the village, and dropped its backpacks and extra equipment, moving forward without excess weight. The Taliban initially chose not to fight, and the company's first sweeps were uneventful.


At 8:30 a.m., as one of the squads searched buildings, a gunshot sounded just behind the walls. The Marines rushed toward the door, guns level to their eyes, ready for their first fight.

A shout carried over the wall. "Dog!" the voice said. A Marine had fired a warning shot at an attacking dog, scaring it off. The young Marines shook their heads.

Minutes later, gunfire erupted to the south, where another unit, 1st Battalion, 6th Marines, had also inserted Marines in the night.

The Marines listened to the fighting far away. They still had no contact.

At 10 a.m., the day changed. Taliban fighters probed 2nd Platoon, and a firefight erupted as the platoon moved toward the road. It subsided, but not before several Taliban fighters had been killed and the platoon had been fired on by small arms and rocket-propelled grenades.

At 12:40, fighting broke out for 3rd Platoon. For almost three hours, 2nd and 3rd Platoons took sporadic fire from insurgents. At times the fighting was intense, and the gunfire rose and roared overhead. The fight briefly quieted after a B-1 bomber dropped a 500-pound bomb on a compound near the landing zone, leveling most of the house there.

For a short while after the airstrike, the village was quiet. But by late afternoon, the company, which had established a crude outpost in a compound, was taking fire again. Between exchanges, a squadl led by Cpl. Thomas D. Drake pushed out across the fields to search the building hit by the airstrike.

The Taliban let the Marines walk into an open field and approach a tall stand of dried grass. Then they opened fire in a hasty ambush. The Marines dropped. They fired back, exposed. Gunfire rose to a crescendo.

Drake shouted over the noise to the team in front, "You got everyone?" He shouted to the team behind him, which was pressed flat in the field. "Everyone OK?" The Taliban firing subsided. "We're moving!" the corporal shouted. The patrol stood and sprinted toward the withdrawing Taliban, and then ran across irrigation dikes and poppy fields and entered the compound that had been struck.

It searched the wreckage, took pictures, collected a few documents and returned to the small outpost just ahead of dark.

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