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Canadians Continue Push in Southern Afghanistan After Taliban Capture 2 Towns

Posted on: Tuesday, 18 July 2006, 18:00 CDT

By TERRY PEDWELL

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (CP) - Canadian and other coalition troops were moving further into southern Afghanistan on Tuesday, amid reports the Taliban had captured two towns in the south.

The offensive was an unexpected continuation of a major operation launched by Afghan and coalition forces in Helmand province last Friday.

The U.S.-led coalition confirmed the Taliban had captured the towns of Garmser and Naway-i-Barakzayi and vowed "decisive action" to retake them.

Hundreds of Afghan and coalition soldiers were later reported to have reclaimed one of the towns without incident Tuesday and were planning to recapture another.

Canadian battle group soldiers - some 600 of them - worn and exhausted from five days of continuous fighting in the Sangin district of Helmand province, had been expected to return to their base at the Kandahar Air Field.

But they were diverted as reports surfaced of the Taliban infiltration to the south of Sangin.

"The soldiers are tired. I know they're tired," acknowledged Canadian Brig.-Gen. David Fraser, commander of coalition forces in southern Afghanistan.

"(But Afghans) are more tired than we are," he said. "I don't think we owe them anything less than 100 per cent from the day that we get here until the day that we leave."

Most of the Canadians involved in the coalition fighting since last Friday were due to head home within the next few weeks, to be replaced by soldiers mainly from CFB Petawawa in Eastern Ontario who would fall under NATO command.

"The operations that they went out to do on Friday have wrapped up," said Maj. Scott Lundy, the Canadian spokesman for coalition forces in Afghanistan.

"(But) they're carrying on with other operations."

As the fighting continued west of Kandahar, military officials were unable to confirm a report that a Canadian patrol had shot and wounded a cyclist in Kandahar City.

It's not clear why the unidentified cyclist had been fired on, although there was speculation that he had got too close to the Canadian patrol convoy.

Amir Mohammed Akhunzada, the deputy governor of Helmand province, said troops descended on Naway-i-Barakzayi Tuesday, taking back the town after Taliban fighters fled. Insurgents torched a police compound, a health clinic and a school before leaving, he said.

The troops were planning to move on to Garmser, a town of several thousand that was captured by militants Sunday, Akhunzada said. He did not say when operations there would begin.

Despite the Taliban's capture of the two towns, the U.S. military insisted its massive anti-insurgent operation in southern Afghanistan, known as Mountain Thrust, has "seriously disrupted" the Taliban network operating in the region.

"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," U.S. spokesman Lt.-Col. Paul Fitzpatrick said in a statement.

Among those killed was the leader of Taliban forces in Sangin.

The offensive was considered to have been most effective in the northern reaches of Helmand province, including Sangin, where the Canadians were fighting.

Afghan police forces have little presence in many southern areas, where Taliban militants have long been able to operate almost unhindered in their efforts to derail U.S.-backed reconstruction efforts.

Fraser said he was confident the coalition forces would win control the region, although he predicted that victory would not come this year, and that battles would likely continue well into next summer.

"It's going to take time and there's going to be fighting going on," Fraser said.

"What we're seeing here this summer is just the first chapter."

Elsewhere in the south, militants killed two Afghan policemen in an execution-style shooting and wounded another in eastern Ghazni province's Gelan district, police said Tuesday.

Separately, guerrillas reportedly fired rockets and mortars into a village in Ghazni's Dih Yak district, wounding three women in a house struck by a mortar.

Afghanistan is gripped by its deadliest spate of violence since the Taliban administration was overthrown in the U.S.-led invasion in 2001, with more than 800 people, mainly militants, being killed since May, according to an Associated Press tally based on coalition and Afghan figures.

Source: Canadian Press

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