Pat Dollard | Young Americans

KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghan, British and U.S. troops closed in on a Taliban-held town in southern Afghanistan on Sunday, sparking fierce clashes, officials said.
A statement from the Afghan Defense Ministry said Taliban fighters in the town of Musa Qala should lay down their weapons or face a “wave of attacks.”

A Musa Qala resident said Taliban fighters were surrounded and had been pushed back into the town’s center. Haji Mohammad Rauf said “fierce fighting” was taking place.

Taliban militants have held Musa Qala since February, but NATO and Afghan troops have stepped up operations there in recent weeks and appear poised to take back the town from the hundreds of Taliban and foreign fighters who have controlled it this year. Musa Qala is in northern Helmand province, the world’s largest poppy growing region.

“Right now we are 2 kilometers (1 mile) from Musa Qala town,” said Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi, the Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman. “The Afghan National Army along with NATO and U.S. Special Forces are carrying out the operation.”

“The reports we have received from the site so far indicate that some of the enemy personnel have laid down their weapons and are leaving the area in civilian clothing,” he said.

The assault on Musa Qala will take “a day or two to unfold,” said Lt. Col. Richard Eaton, a British military spokesman. He said Afghan forces would pour into the town and hold it from Taliban militants.

“We’re not going to take something that we haven’t got a plan to hold,” Eaton said. “We’re not going to take something and then give it up and let the Taliban back in.”

He said this was the first mission in which British forces have participated with the Afghan army as the main fighting force.

British Defense secretary Des Browne met with Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak in the capital, Kabul, before Browne flew to the western city of Herat to get a “wider perspective on Afghanistan,” the British Embassy said.

Taliban militants took Musa Qala after British troops left the town following a contentious peace agreement that gave security responsibilities to Afghan elders.

“Outside I can hear the sounds of explosions. We are quite scared,” Rauf said by telephone from his home just outside Musa Qala, where he lives with his wife, his mother and seven children. “Most of the families have fled the area, but I’m afraid that if we leave the soldiers will loot all the things from our home.”

Rauf said the Taliban were using “big weapons” to keep Afghan and international forces back.

A series of battles around Musa Qala in recent months have signaled international forces’ renewed focus on taking the Taliban stronghold in Afghanistan’s poppy-growing south. The surrounding province, Helmand, is the world’s largest opium poppy-growing region—and the front line of Afghanistan’s bloodiest fighting this year.

Taliban commander Mullah Ahmadullah told The Associated Press by telephone that insurgents were strengthening their positions in Musa Qala, and militants were flowing into the area from nearby districts for the battle.

Ahmadullah said NATO airstrikes hit two homes near Musa Qala, killing 20 civilians. There was no way to verify the information, and Taliban militants frequently exaggerate such claims.

(AP)

British News Version:

British troops were tonight poised to smash through Taleban defences after surrounding the town of Musa Qala and pushing up almost to its outskirts.

Two senior Taleban commanders were captured today as troops advanced to within a mile of the town, the Islamists’ symbolic stronghold in Helmand Province.

Hundreds of rebel fighters in the area have been reported killed in air strikes and probing attacks in the last few weeks in advance of the offensive, one of the most ambitious to be launched in Afghanistan since 2001.

Efforts have also been made to persuade Taleban commanders to defect to the government side.

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