About 2,500 NATO and Afghan troops launched a new operation yesterday to clear Taliban fighters from the country's opium-growing heartland in southern Helmand province, officials said. The offensive targeting the al-Qaeda-linked movement that ruled Afghanistan until 2001 coincided with a suicide attack in the same province and violence elsewhere that left at least 10 people dead. Troops backed by air power kicked off the operation in the early morning in Helmand's Upper Gereshk Valley, an area that has seen weeks of fighting between Taliban and soldiers, including troops from Britain. "It is an operation to clear out Taliban insurgents in that particular area and help to restore governance to that area," said Major Charles Anthony, a spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).
Anthony, speaking at a news conference in Kabul, gave few details of the operation, saying it was still in its early stages. Large parts of Helmand are out of government control. The province also produces more than 50 percent of Afghanistan's illegal opium, with the drugs trade said to fund part of the insurgency. ISAF and the separate US-led coalition force have several operations underway across Afghanistan in an effort to help the fragile government beat back the Taliban insurgency and establish its authority. Linked to the Taliban-led violence, a pro-government tribal elder was gunned down by militants overnight in Gereshk, the district where the NATO-led operation is taking place. The outspoken elder, named Mira Jan, supported the government in the Taliban-dominated region and Taliban rebels were likely behind the killing, provincial police chief Mohammad Hussein Andiwal told AFP.
In a separate incident Taliban rebels killed three Afghan security guards providing security for a road construction company in the neighbouring province of Zabul yesterday, local officials said. Separately, an Afghan policemen and two Taliban fighters were killed after the rebels attacked a police convoy in the western province of Herat on Tuesday, a police commander said. Afghan soldiers also killed three militants and wounded two others in a "clean-up" operation in the central province of Wardak on Tuesday, a defence ministry press statement said.
The Taliban were removed from government nearly six years ago but their anti-government campaign, which is supported by al-Qaeda, has grown in strength with militant attacks on a near-daily basis.