KABUL (AFP) — More than 400 militants have been killed in a 10-week-old operation led by US Marines in a remote district of southern Afghanistan but fighters remain in the area, a commander said Wednesday.
Marines and British troops under NATO command in late April launched the operation in Garmser district, a desert area on the border with Pakistan described as an insurgent "logistics hub" and key opium-producing centre.
Citing figures from Helmand province governor Gulab Mangal, the Marine commanding officer in Afghanistan told reporters in Kabul that more than 400 Taliban-linked rebels had been killed.
"We were a little busy to count but having spoken with governor Mangal sometime afterwards, we believe the number is somewhere beyond 400 and I'm confident that his number is very correct," Colonel Peter Petronzio said.
The colonel said despite some major battles around May, insurgents were still in the area sometimes hiding among ordinary people.
Troops had however not had any recent clashes with Taliban, coming into contact with them largely through rebel bomb attacks and when soldiers found weapons arsenals.
Garmser had been a "stopping point" for militants -- Afghan and non-Afghan -- as they moved from the border into the insurgency in the rest of the country, Petronzio said.
Now it was stable and "working towards being secure."
Around 2,400 soldiers in the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit began deploying to Afghanistan in March to reinforce NATO and US-led troops under pressure from a growing insurgency led by the extremist Taliban.
The unit is due to stay until November, a month longer than expected. They will be replaced by NATO and Afghan troops when they leave Garmser, an International Security Assistance Force spokesman said.
There are about 70,000 international soldiers in Afghanistan helping the government to fight the Taliban insurgency that is said to be influenced by Al-Qaeda.
The Taliban government was ousted in a US-led invasion in late 2001 launched when the hardliners refused to surrender Al-Qaeda leaders for the September 11 attacks on the United States.
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