MUSA QALA, Afghanistan (AFP) — Two rockets were fired into Musa Qala Saturday, a British army officer said, as hundreds of troops patrolled the southern Afghan town after driving out the Taliban five days ago.
Some of the hundreds of locals who had fled fighting that ended Monday with a Taliban retreat were meanwhile drifting back into the small town in Helmand province which the rebels had held for 10 months.
The rockets, which caused no damaged, appeared to come from the north to where some of rebels escaped, said Brigadier Andrew MacKay, head of British forces in the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).
A couple of Taliban may still be in the town and it was impossible to know if some were among the people who were coming back. But if they give up fighting and "come to reconcile, it's OK," MacKay said.
The government has announced a significant reconstruction drive for Musa Qala to show locals they would have a better life under the current government than with the Taliban, who was in government between 1996 and 2001.
They plan to build a school and a main mosque said to have been destroyed when hundreds of Taliban stormed in, as well as employ 1,500 Afghans on other reconstruction projects.
Military operations were continuing to chase out Taliban from the rest of Musa Qala district and others centres in Helmand, MacKay said.
Officials have said previously the Taliban control three other districts in the province, the main producer of Afghanistan's world-leading opium output that is said to finance some of the Taliban's insurgency.
Hundreds of Afghan and international soldiers moved through the not-yet-normal town in armoured vehicles or on foot as a few dozen men and young boys milled about and a handful of shops sold vegetables and gas.
One of the men, with a beard and dark robe, said he had arrived to look for money as his family had no food.
Other troops were on rooftops, maintaining their claim to the town which had been in Taliban hands since February and became a key base for an intensifying insurgency in which officials say Taliban have been joined by Al-Qaeda.
MacKay said he knew of only three civilians killed in the fighting to take back Musa Qala, which normally had a population of up to 20,000 including surrounding districts, and there had been little damage.
"Sometimes we were facing groups of six or seven Taliban or larger groups of 40," he told a dozen journalists flown in for a fleeting visit. "They were extremely well-trained, they knew the ground perfectly well."
The Afghan army has said that "hundreds" of rebels were either killed, wounded or arrested in the operation. It has not given a more precise figure.
Afghan nationals flags were flying on a former building used by the Taliban and the district administration building, also destroyed when the rebels arrived.
There was another flag atop a 15-metre-tall (50-foot) minaret; the Taliban had recently hanged two alleged thieves from a concrete structure around the pillar, resident Abdul Jabar told journalists.
They had also chopped off the hands of people, said Afghan army commander General Mohaiuddin Guri. The Taliban, who follow a conservative version of Sharia law, had carried out similar punishments while ruling the country.
Home-made explosives hidden in cooking pots, waistcoats to be used in suicide bombings and 30-40 sacks of opium seized during a military search of the town were put on display for the media.
"It was secure under the Taliban and for us what matters is security," said Jabar, aged 22, adding he would wait and see what developed with the Afghan army and ISAF in town.
"I don't know yet if I can trust ISAF. I am not saying they are bad people; all I am is a shopkeeper and all I want is security."
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