US marines with 1/3 Charlie Company patrol a market
Thousands of Marines, NATO and Afghan soldiers are massing around the town of Marjah in Helmand province, where military officials have predicted an impending offensive will be one of the biggest of the eight-year US-led war.
The flow of residents fleeing the imminent offensive has slowed, provincial officials said, after loaded-down cars, trucks, tractors and buses clogged roads to the provincial capital Lashkah Gar for days.
"We have announced and told people in Marjah not to leave their houses as our operation is well planned and designed to target the enemy," said Daud Ahmadi, spokesman for Helmand Governor Mohammad Gulab Mangal.
"Civilians will not be harmed," he said. He added that another 75 families had left Marjah, on top of 164 families who left earlier. Other officials have said more than 400 families have fled.
The operation, expected to begin in days, will be the biggest push since President Barack Obama announced a new surge of US troops in Afghanistan and one of the biggest since the 2001 invasion defeated the Taliban regime. Marjah: Heroin and Taliban heartland
The counter-insurgency strategy aims to follow up what officials predict will be a decisive military victory by establishing Afghan government control.
But Taliban fighters appear defiant in the face of the enormous fire power being amassed in the region, where they have held sway for years in tandem with drug traffickers.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) warned that "the current upsurge in military operations in Helmand... has resulted in a marked increase in the number of casualties requiring emergency medical treatment."
"Staff working at the ICRC's first aid post in Marjah have been seeing increasing numbers of war casualties," it said in an operational statement.
Civilians and injured fighters find it "more and more difficult" to obtain "urgently needed medical care, owing to mounting security problems and numerous road blocks and checkpoints throughout Helmand province."
The ICRC called on all sides of the conflict to respect the needs of the injured and said it was upgrading its own first aid post in Marjah.
"Patients, whether civilians or injured fighters, must be allowed to enter and leave it freely," it said.
An AFP photographer said 1st Battalion, 3rd Marines Regiment had arrived by helicopter at Berkha Nawa junction, on the northeastern outskirts of Marjah, late Tuesday and immediately came under sniper fire from insurgents. Related article: Afghan assault on Taliban to test US strategy
The Marines encampment, reinforced with sandbags, also came under rocket fire. US Cobra helicopters were called in to attack Taliban positions, the photographer said.
The Marines searched houses and compounds for weapons and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) -- the prime Taliban killer of foreign troops -- and evacuated residents from all but one of the homes still occupied.
The remaining family were staying as they had nowhere to go.
Insurgents could be seen planting IEDs on roads surrounding the junction and Marines were doing regular sweeps to clear the area Wednesday.
Mark Sedwill, NATO's senior civilian representative in Afghanistan, said the US-led alliance hoped the military phase of the operation would proceed "swiftly and with as little incident as possible".
"People need to be under no illusion -- this operation is going to succeed, we are going to bring Afghan government sovereignty to this area," he told reporters.
The biggest threat faced by international and Afghan forces is IEDs, with the Taliban claiming to have developed a new bomb -- named Omar after their fugitive leader -- that cannot be detected by Western mine sweepers.
So far this year more than 60 foreign troops have died in Afghanistan. The number of foreign troop deaths hit a record 520 last year.
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