US-led blitz "bogged down" in Marjah
Local Editor, 16-02-2010
As the US forces continue to press forward in the Marjah region of Afghanistan's Helmand Province, reports said they are struggling mightily with home-made bombs and sniper fire, and were able to advance only 500 yards yesterday.
Despite the pretense that the battle is going "according to plans," the promises of a quick victory with overwhelming force in Marjah has turned out to be overly optimistic.
Some officials have declared the quick offensive could take upwards of a month.
Some US commanders, however, remain convinced that "pretty soon, they are going to run out of gas," as Colonel Scott Hartsell puts it.
But the "progress" made in the province came with a heavy price.
NATO forces declared they called in an air strike against what they assumed to be "persons planting an IED explosive device" in the Kandahar Province, but were later revealed to be innocent civilians.
The strike left at least five of the civilians dead and two others wounded.
NATO expressed "regrets" for the killings, and promised to offer the families of the slain financial compensation for the loss of their loved ones.
Officials were unclear about what the civilians were actually doing instead of planting IEDs, but the incident had shades of a previous air strike in Kandahar, in August. In that case, US troops saw people "loading munitions into a van," ordering an air attack against them. The "munitions" turned out to be cucumbers, and the militants were farmers.
Only yesterday, a US rocket attack in the Helmand Province missed its intended target, killing 12 civilians in a house, raising the declared number of civilian deaths in the past 24 hours to 17.
As the US forces continue to press forward in the Marjah region of Afghanistan's Helmand Province, reports said they are struggling mightily with home-made bombs and sniper fire, and were able to advance only 500 yards yesterday.
Despite the pretense that the battle is going "according to plans," the promises of a quick victory with overwhelming force in Marjah has turned out to be overly optimistic.
Some officials have declared the quick offensive could take upwards of a month.
Some US commanders, however, remain convinced that "pretty soon, they are going to run out of gas," as Colonel Scott Hartsell puts it.
But the "progress" made in the province came with a heavy price.
NATO forces declared they called in an air strike against what they assumed to be "persons planting an IED explosive device" in the Kandahar Province, but were later revealed to be innocent civilians.
The strike left at least five of the civilians dead and two others wounded.
NATO expressed "regrets" for the killings, and promised to offer the families of the slain financial compensation for the loss of their loved ones.
Officials were unclear about what the civilians were actually doing instead of planting IEDs, but the incident had shades of a previous air strike in Kandahar, in August. In that case, US troops saw people "loading munitions into a van," ordering an air attack against them. The "munitions" turned out to be cucumbers, and the militants were farmers.
Only yesterday, a US rocket attack in the Helmand Province missed its intended target, killing 12 civilians in a house, raising the declared number of civilian deaths in the past 24 hours to 17.
Comments
- Related News
