Showing posts with label 3rd Battalion 6th Marine Regiment. Show all posts
Taliban Puts up Fight in Marjah
"That doesn't necessarily mean an intense gun battle, but it probably will be 30 days of clearing," Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson said. "I am more than cautiously optimistic that we will get it done before that."
Squads of Marines and Afghan soldiers occupied a majority of Marjah, but gunfire continued as pockets of militants dug in and fought. Sniper fire forced Nicholson to duck behind an earthen bank in the northern part of the city where he toured the tip of the Marines' front line held by Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 6th Marines.
"The fire we just took reflects how I think this will go - small pockets of sporadic fighting by small groups of very mobile individuals," he said.
Explosions from controlled detonations of bombs and other explosives were being heard about every 10 minutes in the area.
"There's really a massive amount of improvised explosive devices," Nicholson said. "We thought there would be a lot, but we are finding even more than expected."
The second day of NATO's largest offensive since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan also was marked by painstaking house searches.
Using metal detectors and sniffer dogs, U.S. forces found caches of explosives rigged to blow as they went from compound to compound down streets riddled with thousands of homemade bombs and mines. Shots continued to ring out in some neighborhoods.
They also discovered several sniper positions, freshly abandoned and booby-trapped with grenades.
The troops also found two large caches of ammonium nitrate - a common ingredient in explosives - totaling about 8,800 pounds (4,000 kilograms), said Lt. Josh Diddams, a Marine spokesman.
"We're in the majority of the city at this point," Diddams said. He said the nature of the resistance has changed from the initial assault, with insurgents now holding ground in some neighborhoods.
"We're starting to come across areas where the insurgents have actually taken up defensive positions," he said. "Initially it was more hit and run."
At least two shuras, or meetings, have been held with local Afghan residents - one in the northern district of Nad Ali and the other in Marjah itself, NATO said in a statement. Discussions have been "good," and more shuras are planned in coming days as part of a larger strategy to enlist community support for the NATO mission, it said.
Afghan officials said Sunday that at least 27 insurgents had been killed in the operation.
Most of the Taliban appeared to have scattered in the face of overwhelming force, possibly waiting to regroup and stage attacks later to foil the alliance's plan to stabilize the area and expand Afghan government control in the volatile south.
Two NATO soldiers were killed on the first day of the operation - one American and one Briton - according to military officials in their countries. At least seven civilians had been wounded, but there were no reports of deaths, Helmand provincial spokesman Daoud Ahmadi said.
More than 30 transport helicopters ferried troops into the heart of Marjah before dawn Saturday, while British, Afghan and U.S. troops fanned out across the Nad Ali district to the north of the mud-brick town, long a stronghold of the Taliban.
Maj. Gen. Gordon Messenger told reporters in London that British forces "have successfully secured the area militarily" with only sporadic resistance from Taliban forces. A Taliban spokesman insisted their fighters still controlled the town.
President Barack Obama was keeping a close watch on combat operations, White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said.
Vietor said Defense Secretary Robert Gates would have the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, brief Obama on Sunday.
In Marjah, most of the Marines said they would have preferred a straight-up gunbattle to the "death at every corner" crawl they faced.
"Basically, if you hear the boom, it's good. It means you're still alive after the thing goes off," said Lance Corp. Justin Hennes, 22, of Lakeland, Florida.
Local Marjah residents crept out from hiding after dawn Sunday, some reaching out to Afghan troops partnered with Marine platoons.
"Could you please take the mines out?" Mohammad Kazeem, a local pharmacist, asked the Marines through an interpreter. The entrance to his shop had been completely booby-trapped, without any way for him to re-enter his home, he said.
The bridge over the canal into Marjah from the north was rigged with so many explosives that Marines erected temporary bridges to cross into the town.
"It's just got to be a very slow and deliberate process," said Capt. Joshua Winfrey of Stillwater, Oklahoma, a Marine company commander.
Lt. Col. Brian Christmas, commander of the 3rd Battalion, 6th Marines, said U.S. troops fought gunbattles in at least four areas of the town and faced "some intense fighting."
To the east, the battalion's Kilo Company was inserted into the town by helicopter without meeting resistance but was then "significantly engaged" as the Marines fanned out from the landing zone, Christmas said.
Marine commanders had said they expected between 400 and 1,000 insurgents - including more than 100 foreign fighters - to be holed up in Marjah, a town of 80,000 people that is the linchpin of the militants' logistical and opium-smuggling network in the south.
The offensive, code-named "Moshtarak," or "Together," was described as the biggest joint operation of the Afghan war, with 15,000 troops involved, including some 7,500 in Marjah itself. The government says Afghan soldiers make up at least half of the offensive's force.
Once Marjah is secured, NATO hopes to quickly deliver aid and provide public services in a bid to win support among the estimated 125,000 people who live in the town and surrounding villages. The Afghans' ability to restore those services is crucial to the success of the operation and in preventing the Taliban from returning.
Marines Wait in Cold for Afghan Offensive
OUTPOST BELLEAU WOOD, Afghanistan - Take a desert of yellow-orange dust so flat it looks like Mars, with a freezing wind that blows so hard it can lift a large tent.
Add hundreds of U.S. Marines, squads of Afghan soldiers, some Drug Enforcement Administration agents, a few private contractors, along with dozens of armored cars, mine breachers and an improvised helicopter landing zone.
That's Outpost Belleau Wood, a Marine base near the edge of the Taliban-controlled town of Marjah, which the Marines plan to attack in the coming days.
It took barely a week for the 3rd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment to create the outpost from scratch.
They bulldozed earth berms to make a protection wall, pitched lines of pup-tents that bend and wobble in the gale, and set up batteries of mortars and 155-millimeter artillery cannons.
"Those guns started shooting the night they got here," said the battalion commander, Lt. Col. Brian Christmas, as he leaned forward against the wind while walking through the base in full body armor and helmet.
Named after a World War I battle where the 6th Marines earned the label "devil dogs" for the ferocity of their fight against German troops, Belleau Wood lies about 7 miles (10 kilometers) north of Marjah.
Several units from the battalion are already pushing in toward the town, where an estimated 600 fighters are entrenched. While the outpost has been hit only once, companies closer to Marjah face daily skirmishes and bombings.
Marjah is the biggest community in southern Afghanistan that is under Taliban control and a center of their logistical and drug-smuggling networks. The NATO command believes restoring government control there would go a long way to discrediting the Taliban among Afghans in a part of the country where the militants have been strong for years.
The offensive proper is expected to be the biggest in the nine-year Afghan war, and troops on the outpost are all waiting for battle.
Dozens of Marine engineers have been rehearsing how to lay out massive metallic bridges they plan to use when troops will need to cross the canals surrounding Marjah. Route clearance teams were also fine-tuning their tactics to detect the bombs that litter the area.
NATO commanders have been outspoken on their plans to take Marjah. But they've remained tightlipped on one key bit of information: timing.
Few know when the offensive will begin, and those who do are saying nothing. So the Marines are in the starting blocks, waiting in the cold.
"The wait is part of the fight," says Hospital Corpsman 1st Class Daniel Perez, a Navy medic. "It gives people the time to pump up with anticipation."
Marjah is suspected to be one of the biggest, most dangerous minefields NATO forces have ever faced, and hundreds of the fighters barricaded inside could be planning to fight until death.
But Perez said he hasn't seen anyone frightened by the fight - "or if they are, they're hiding it very well."
He says waiting, however long, doesn't matter for the Marines.
"It's almost like the Olympics," he said. "You train and train and train ... and this is finally the big show."
