Soldiers in offensive to disrupt Taliban network

A massive anti-insurgent operation in southern Afghanistan has “seriously disrupted” the Taliban network operating in the region, the US military said today.

Operation Mountain Thrust, which was launched in earnest in June, involves more than 10,000 US, British, Canadian and Afghan soldiers trying to crush Taliban militants operating in four southern provinces.

“Afghan and coalition forces have killed numerous low and mid-level commanders that the senior Taliban leadership rely on to intimidate villages, threaten elders and lead small bands of extremists to conduct attacks on Afghan and Coalition forces,” US spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Paul Fitzpatrick said in a statement.

The military said the offensive had been most effective in northern reaches of Helmand provinces, including Sangin, Musa Qala and Baghran districts. About 4,000 Nato-led British soldiers are deploying to Helmand to take over security control from US forces at the end of the month.

But Afghan officials said scores of Taliban fighters chased police forces out of two southern Helmand towns, Garmser and Naway-i-Barakzayi, over the past two days.

Coalition military officials said the military was looking into the reports.

Afghan police forces have little presence in many southern areas of the country, where Taliban militants have long been able to operate relatively freely in their bid to derail this country’s US-backed reconstruction effort. This year, militants have stepped up attacks.

Militants killed two Afghan policemen in an execution-style shooting and wounded another in eastern Ghazni province’s Gelan district, police said today.

The three police had caught a lift in a mobile crane along a remote road when Taliban gunmen stopped it late yesterday, said General Tafseer Khan, the provincial police chief.

The Taliban saw the police in the vehicle, ordered them out and shot two dead on the spot, Khan said. The third policemen, who had a gun, was wounded after exchanging fire with the militants.

Separately, militants fired rockets and mortars into a village in Ghazni’s Dih Yak district, wounding three women in a house struck by a mortar, Khan said.

Afghanistan is gripped by its deadliest spate of violence since the Taliban’s fall in 2001 with more than 800 people, mainly militants, being killed since May.

Meanwhile, police in neighbouring Pakistan arrested five suspected Afghan members of the Taliban militia, including a low-ranking commander, in a raid on a house in the south-western city of Quetta late yesterday, said Chaudhry Mohammed Yaqoob, the provincial police chief.

Afghan officials allege that Taliban find sanctuary in Pakistan, and that militia commanders operate from its territory. Pakistan says it does all it can to stop militant activity, although it has made few such arrests.