Key posts seized in Taliban stronghold

KABUL, Afghanistan — U.S., Afghan and British troops seized crucial positions across the Taliban stronghold of Marjah on Saturday, encountering sporadic fighting as they began the treacherous ordeal of house-to-house searches.

More than 6,000 troops came in fast, overwhelming most immediate resistance. But as the troops started to fan out on searches, fighting with insurgents grew in frequency and intensity across a wide area.

The pattern suggested the hardest fighting lay in the days to come.

One U.S. and one British Marine were reported killed by small-arms fire, but none from the Afghan army, whose soldiers make up the majority of those in the fight.

Three U.S. soldiers were killed and seven wounded when they were attacked by a suicide bomber on a motorcycle during a foot patrol in neighboring Kandahar province. A second British soldier was killed by a homemade bomb in southern Afghanistan in a blast unrelated to the operation in Marjah.

NATO officials said no civilian casualties had been reported. In the chaos, the claim was impossible to verify.

U.S. commanders said the troops had achieved every first-day objective. That included advancing into the town and seizing intersections, government buildings and one of the main bazaars in the center of town.

Some Marines held meetings with local Afghans almost immediately to reassure them and to ask for help in finding Taliban and hidden bombs.

Mohammed Dawood Ahmadi, a spokesman for Helmand province's governor, said Afghan and NATO forces had set up 11 outposts across Marjah and two in the neighboring district of Nad Ali. "We now occupy all the strategic points in the area," he said.

From those posts, Marines and soldiers began to go on patrols, searching door to door for weapons and fighters. This phase of the operation, considered the most dangerous, is expected to last at least five days. The biggest concern is bombs and booby-traps, of which there are believed to be hundreds, in roads, houses and footpaths.

Major operation

The invasion of Marjah is the largest military operation of its kind in Afghanistan since the U.S.-backed war began nine years ago. The area, about 80 square miles of farmland, villages and irrigation canals, is believed to be the largest Taliban sanctuary in Afghanistan.

Afghan and American commanders believe there are also a number of opium factories that the insurgents control to finance their war.

On the first full day of operations, much of the expected resistance failed to materialize. There was none of the eyeball-to-eyeball fighting that typified the battle for Fallujah in Iraq in 2004.

"Actually, the resistance is not there," Abdul Rahim Wardak, the Afghan defense minister, said in a news conference in Kabul. "Based on our intelligence reports, some of the Taliban have left the area. But we still expected there to be several hundred. Just yesterday, we received reports that reinforcements had arrived from neighboring provinces."

Dozens, if not hundreds, of insurgents probably fled Marjah in the days leading up to the assault, according to military officers and area residents. U.S. and Afghan commanders hoped to achieve that result when they took the unusual step of broadcasting their intention to invade Marjah days ahead of time.

But it seems likely many Taliban remained.

"I don't think they have gone anywhere, because Marjah has been surrounded by Afghan and foreign forces on every side," said Palawan, a farmer in Marjah who goes by one name.

Novel part of operation

What has been advertised as the most important, and novel, aspect of the Marjah operation began Saturday.

After clearing Marjah, U.S. and Afghan officials say, they intend to import an entire Afghan civil administration, along with nearly 2,000 Afghan police officers, to help keep the Taliban from coming back in.

The first of those, about 1,000 Afghan paramilitary police, were scheduled to begin arriving within 24 hours.

In some parts of the town, U.S. and Afghan troops began holding meetings with residents, trying to win the Afghans' support. Previous operations to clear the Taliban from towns and cities have failed across Afghanistan, in large part because the Americans and Afghans have rarely left behind competent Afghan government or security forces to hold the places.

That has meant the Taliban have not stayed away for long. This time, in Marjah, things are supposed to be different.

"Our main goal in this joint operation is not to kill insurgents," Wardak said. "In fact, our primary goal is to expand the government's influence and protect the civilian population."

A local Taliban commander named Hashemi, reached by telephone, said his men had fought through much of the day, shooting at least six foreign soldiers. That claim could not be verified. Hashemi said six of his own men had been killed.

U.S. soldiers said Saturday that firefights with the Taliban began sporadically but grew more frequent and more intense as the day went on. Late in the afternoon, insurgents and a company of Marines fought a two-hour gunbattle at the town's northern edge. It ended when the Marines dropped a 500-pound bomb on the Taliban's position.

After the bomb, the Marines believed that several wounded and dead Taliban fighters lay in the field in front of them. But each time they ventured into the field, Taliban fighters opened fire. After a time, the Marines decided to leave the Taliban casualties in the field, said Capt. Joshua Biggers, a Marine company commander.

"Every time they try to go out," he said of his men, "they get hammered."

C. J. Chivers contributed reporting from Marjah, and an Afghan employee of The New York Times from Helmand province.