Marines take key positions in Marja

OUTSIDE MARJA and KABUL, Afghanistan _ Picking their way through a dense tangle of homemade bombs, U.S. Marines on Saturday seized key positions in the Taliban stronghold of Marja, as thousands of coalition troops consolidated their hold on a wide swath of desert and farm territory surrounding the southern Afghan town.

U.S. and Afghan commanders reported only scattered resistance from Taliban fighters, who boasted _ despite clear evidence to the contrary _ that they were holding off the massive coalition assault.

Western military officials said some insurgents had fled the town in advance of the offensive, and that others appeared to have fallen back, finding sanctuary in parts of the town not yet secured by the Marines.

At least 20 insurgents were reported killed on the first full day of the offensive, meant to establish security and governance in what had been a particularly chaotic corner of Helmand province. The Marines, who pushed into the Helmand River valley seven months ago, had described Marja as the last main Taliban sanctuary in their theater of operations.

The American military reported three service members were killed by an explosion in southern Afghanistan, but did not specify the location, or whether they had been part of the attacking force.

About 5,000 Marines are spearheading the Marja offensive, but a total of some 15,000 coalition forces are involved in combat and support roles, including British troops and American army units who pushed in from the northeast, linking up with the Marines to encircle the town.

The offensive began hours before dawn, with the thunder of helicopters filling the dark sky. More than 60 choppers took part in what Maj. Gen. Nick Carter, the commander of NATO forces in southern Afghanistan, described as a “successful insertion” by air of thousands of coalition and Afghan troops into the town itself, as well as surrounding farmlands.

The ground advance into the main population center in the 140-square-mile subdistrict was slower, delayed by the painstaking task of clearing away one of the thickest layers of improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, that Western commanders had encountered in a concentrated area.

Homemade bombs, planted by insurgents on roads, in culverts and in open terrain, are the No. 1 killer of Western troops in Afghanistan. Throughout the day, the boom of detonations echoed through the streets as bomb-disposal teams disabled one IED after another.

The network of canals ringing the town _ built decades ago as part of an American-sponsored agricultural-development program _ were used by the insurgents as makeshift fortifications, with the defenders seeding the banks with bombs and trying to flood a main waterway. The Marines laid down metal bridges to cross the canals.

Several thousand civilians have fled the town, with the exodus continuing even amid the fighting. NATO had urged noncombatants to stay in their homes once the battle began, rather than risking their safety on the roads, but some families braved IEDs and Taliban checkpoints to get clear.

“Our home and orchards were destroyed in the last offensive, and we are worried that they might be destroyed again,” said Marja farmer Abdul Hadi, who took shelter with his family in the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah. But he expressed support for the offensive, saying locals wanted the foreign and Afghan forces to stay in place to keep the Taliban from returning and terrorizing townspeople.

“Marja was on fire, and we want it pulled from the flames,” he said.

The performance of Afghan security forces is being closely watched in this offensive as an indicator of their eventual ability to shoulder security responsibilities so foreign troops can leave Afghanistan. The operation is code-named “Moshtarak,” or “Together” in the Dari language, apparently meant to stress the partnership between Afghan and coalition troops.

The commander of Afghan forces, Gen. Sher Mohammad Zazai, said his troops had helped uncover Taliban weapons caches throughout the day, seizing arms that included heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, and carried out house searches that cultural sensitivities dictate be done by Afghan troops rather than foreigners.

President Hamid Karzai, who gave his approval to the offensive only hours before its start, issued a short statement calling on the assault force to exercise “absolute caution to avoid harming civilians.” Karzai, who hopes to woo Taliban fighters away from the ranks and back into civilian life, also made a direct appeal to insurgents in Marja to lay down their weapons.

Taliban spokesman Qari Yousaf Ahmadi, reached by telephone, shrugged off Karzai’s appeal, and insisted the insurgents were holding off the vastly larger coalition force.

But there were signs that many Taliban, including some commanders, had held to their usual practice of simply melting away in the face of a full-on confrontation with Western forces. Often, they regroup later and carry out harassing attacks.

Gulab Mangal, the governor of Helmand province, told reporters that the “first phase of the operation is very successful,” but suggested that bringing a genuine sense of safety to townspeople would take far longer.

“There is so that much we need _ roads, hospitals,” said a Marja tribal elder, Ali Shah Khan Mazlomyar. “What we need is security _ real, permanent security.”

Tony.Perry@latimes.com Laura.King@latimes.com