Afghans flee town as Taliban dig in for NATO raid
Source: Reuters
(Adds German agreement on extra planes) By Saeed Ali Achakzai SPIN BOLDAK, Afghanistan, Feb 7 (Reuters) - More than 1,000 villagers have fled a southern Afghan town as Taliban fighters dig in to repel NATO efforts to drive them out, residents and officials said on Wednesday. Helmand provincial governor Haji Assadullah Wafa told Reuters by phone a military operation would soon be launched to recapture Musa Qala, which the Taliban over-ran last week. British-led NATO forces had struck a deal with tribal elders after months of heavy fighting to withdraw from the town if the Taliban were also kept out. "The Taliban are only in the town to create problems for the people," he said. "They do not have the ability to seize an area and maintain their control over it." It is not uncommon for the Taliban to seize a town or district centre, but they do not hold them for long. A large number of Taliban fighters had reinforced the town with heavy weapons, a resident told Reuters by phone, and NATO spy planes could be heard overhead. The Taliban have accused foreign troops of violating the truce with an air strike that killed the brother of local Taliban leader Mullah Ghafour. NATO commanders and villager elders say that strike was outside the area covered by the truce. Ghafour was himself killed in an air strike on Sunday. U.S.-led forces said they also arrested two suspected al Qaeda members on Wednesday in the east, near the Pakistan border. Both were Afghans, the force said in a statement, but it did not identify them. BLASTS KILL FIVE Also on Wednesday, a roadside bomb killed two Afghan guards working for a U.S. security company in the southern province of Kandahar, provincial officials said. Six guards were wounded. Three police officers were killed while defusing a mine planted by the Taliban on a road in the west of the country on Tuesday night, police said. After the bloodiest year since the Taliban was ousted in 2001, NATO and the insurgents are gearing up for a major offensive when the snow melts in the spring. The new commander of NATO's 33,000-strong International Security Assistance Force, U.S. General Dan McNeill is expected to take a more aggressive approach than his British predecessor, General David Richards, after taking over on Sunday. And NATO's top operational commander wants more troops to help crush the Taliban, but faces widespread reluctance among allies, alliance officials said in Brussels on Tuesday. U.S. General Bantz Craddock will present a request for 3-½ extra battalions -- the equivalent of more than 2,000 troops -- at a meeting of national defence ministers in Seville on Thursday and Friday, they said. Germany's cabinet agreed on Wednesday to send six Tornado reconnaissance jets to help boost intelligence gathering. About 500 crew and maintenance personnel will accompany the aircraft to Afghanistan where Germany has about 3,000 troops stationed, mainly in Kabul and the relatively stable north. Germany has resisted pressure mainly from the United States and Britain to redeploy soldiers to the more dangerous south. "Better reconnaissance will lead to measured and proportional reactions from international forces and should help avoid collateral damage (civilian deaths)," Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung told reporters after the cabinet agreement. (Additional reporting by Mark John in Brussels and Sabine Siebold in Berlin)
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