Huge US military camp surfaces in "desert of death"

The US is setting up a military camp in the southern Afghan province of Helmand to lodge extra American troops tasked with fighting the Taliban.

Dozens of bulldozers are rumbling and soldiers could be seen swinging hammers in the sweltering heat of Afghanistan desert, locally called Dasht-e-Margo or 'Desert of Death'.

The project got underway after US President Barack Obama declared plans to send another 4,000 troops to Afghanistan in addition to 17,000 extra troops already deployed in the war-ravaged country.

On Thursday, US Defense [War] Secretary Robert Gates flew into Camp Leatherneck and surveyed preparations for its construction, AFP reported.

Speaking at a news conference in Kabul, Gates described the transfer of a large number of troops and so much equipment to the military site as a "logistical challenge" since insurgency-plagued Afghanistan is deprived of major airports and roads.

The camp is being built next to Camp Bastion, the main British military base in the country. It includes a vast airfield that eventually will be 4,860 feet (1,481 meters) long and home to 55 helicopters and other aircraft.

US engineers at the site say the runway project began about a month ago and has to be finished by the end of June.

In recent months, Afghanistan has been battered with escalating levels of fighting. Taliban insurgents frequently carry out a spate of fatal attacks and are now in the saddle, controlling large swathes of restive southern Afghanistan where Afghan and international forces do not have enough manpower to uphold order.