150 Taliban Killed in Offensive

The 3500 Marines that just started their tour in AFghanistan aren't fucking about. In the past week, 150 taliban have been killed. Thats a lot of raisins for the dead taliban, 10800 to be exact. AFP

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AFP) — International and Afghan troops forged ahead with an offensive against the Taliban near the Pakistan border on Tuesday, with a governor insisting 150 rebels had been killed in the past week.

US Marines and British troops under NATO command launched a significant new operation two weeks ago in Garmser district in southern Helmand province, a key battleground for a Taliban-led insurgency and an opium-producing centre.

Soldiers in a separate US-led coalition have also reported several engagements in the area in the past week. They said Tuesday they had killed a dozen rebels in Garmser on Monday.

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The international forces helping Afghanistan fight an insurgency led by the Al-Qaeda-backed Taliban normally do not issue death tolls from their engagements, saying they want to avoid a "body count."

But Helmand governor Gulab Mangal told AFP on Tuesday that 150 Islamic rebels, most of whom he said were Al-Qaeda-linked Arab and Pakistani fighters, had been killed in military action in Garmser in the past week.

"In the past seven, eight days, we have killed about 150 insurgents, most of them foreign fighters," he said, citing "intelligence."

"We have intelligence reports that more than 500 enemy fighters, most of them foreign terrorists, are in the district," he said. "The operation will continue until the district is cleared of these destructive elements."

The Afghan army, operating with some of the international deployments, could not be reached for comment. NATO's International Security Assistance Force could not verify the numbers.

"The Marines continue to gain ground down in Helmand," ISAF Major Martin O'Donnell told AFP, adding that he could not comment on death tolls.

The Marines said: "While we are continuing operations to clear the Taliban from the Garmser district, it is not ISAF nor US Military policy to comment on enemy casualties as we do not consider this a reliable measure of success."