KABUL, 15 June 2006 — US-led Coalition and Afghan forces have launched their biggest counterinsurgency operation since the fall of the Taleban and are preparing to move into new rebel strongholds, the coalition said yesterday. The announcement came as 26 Taleban were killed in fighting near the border with Pakistan and four civilians died in rocket attacks, a provincial governor said.
The campaign, named Operation Mountain Thrust, was launched in southern Afghanistan in mid-May, spokesman Lt. Col. Paul Fitzpatrick told AFP. Information about the operation had been under wraps. Involving 11,000 troops, including from Britain, Canada and the United States, as well as Afghan soldiers, it is the strongest push against the hard-liners since they were toppled from power in December 2001.
The operation has been timed to coincide with the looming transfer of command in the south from the US-led coalition to NATO’s International Security Assistance Force, Fitzpatrick said. It was intended to “set the conditions” for the transfer due in late July or early August, he said. “We have been conducting Operation Mountain Thrust since mid-May, disrupting the Taleban insurgents in southern Afghanistan, specifically their leadership,” he said.
“We are moving to the next phase of the operation in the northern provinces of southern Afghanistan,” he said from Bagram Air Base near Kabul. These provinces have a strong Taleban presence. The south saw a dramatic upsurge in insurgency-linked violence in mid-May, with Taleban fighters taking on Afghan and foreign troops in some of their biggest battles in years.
The security forces in turn launched major strikes. About 400 people, most of them insurgents but including Afghan security forces and about 40 civilians, were killed in a roughly two-week stretch. Fitzpatrick said troops had encountered increased resistance from the rebels, but this had been expected as there were more Afghan and coalition forces in the area than there had ever been.
In the latest bloodshed, Afghan and coalition forces killed 26 Taleban in southeastern Paktika province near the border with Pakistan yesterday while four civilians were killed in rocket attacks in the same province, a provincial governor said. The coalition also announced that one of its soldiers was killed and 15 suspected Taleban rebels were killed or wounded in battles a day earlier. The soldier, whose nationality was not released, was killed in eastern Kunar province where another campaign — Operation Mountain Lion, involving 2,500 Afghan and coalition troops — was launched in April and is ongoing.
