a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/06/AR2009070600191.html"Washington Post:/abr /br /blockquoteRoadside bombings and a gun attack killed seven U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan on Monday, providing a grim reminder of the insurgency's resilience even as Marines moved to consolidate gains in their operation against the Taliban in the southern province of Helmand. pFour members of a U.S. military team training Afghan security forces died after a bomb struck their convoy near the northern city of Kunduz, according to American military officials. Northern Afghanistan has been relatively stable compared with other parts of the country, in part because much of the territory is under the control of anti-Taliban warlords. But violence has been increasing in recent months around Kunduz and other northern cities as Taliban fighters seek to exploit a thin presence of NATO forces in the area. /p pTwo U.S. soldiers were killed in a bombing in the southern province of Zabul, the officials said. Another American soldier died after a firefight with insurgents in eastern Afghanistan. This was the deadliest day for U.S. forces in Afghanistan in nearly a year. /p pThree other NATO soldiers -- two Canadians and one Briton -- also were killed in Zabul on Monday when their helicopter crashed. And in neighboring Kandahar province, a suicide bomber detonated a car filled with explosives outside the gates of the primary NATO base in southern Afghanistan, killing two Afghan soldiers and a civilian and wounding 16 others. /p pDespite the violence elsewhere, the parts of southern Afghanistan that are the focus of a major Marine operation launched last week remained relatively quiet Monday. U.S. commanders believe many Taliban fighters have left areas of Helmand in which the Marines are operating because the insurgents were unprepared for the size of the mission, which involves about 4,000 U.S. troops. /p p"Coming in with overwhelming force really made a difference," said Lt. Col. William McCollough, the commander of the 1st Battalion of the 5th Marine Regiment. His unit is responsible for trying to secure the Nawa district of Helmand, a verdant farming community along the Helmand River that has been in Taliban hands for the past few years. /p pBefore the Marines arrived, about 40 British soldiers were deployed here. Now there are more than 750 Marines, and they are patrolling areas the British never visited.br //pp "We've presented the Taliban with a larger and more lethal problem," McCollough said. "They're doing the sensible thing: They're trying to run away." /p pOn Sunday, his unit apprehended a car full of young men driving out of the district. One of them carried a letter with instructions from a local Taliban leader to depart the area but to lay roadside bombs on the way out, McCollough said. /p pWith Nawa eerily calm -- the almost daily attacks on the main patrol base in the town center stopped a week ago -- the Marines are trying to translate the improved security into lasting changes in the community. They want to reopen the school and clinic here, and they want the police to take a more active role in providing security. The top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, flew in by helicopter for a brief visit to the base Monday to reinforce that message.br //pp...br //p/blockquoteKonduz where the four trainers were killed is the place the Taliban fled after the fall of Mazur-Sharif in the early days of the war. They were eventually chased form there too. What this enemy action demonstrates is that when presented with overwhelming force the enemy must retreat. It is the areas where our forces are limited that get the most enemy attention. This shows the weakness of Obama's policy of restricting the number of troops in the country.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5051247-5289339853410409421?l=prairiepundit.blogspot.com'//div
technorati tags:
political news | news | world news
More at: News 2 Cromley
No comments:
Post a Comment