24th MEU Marines launch assault into Taliban-held area

[Vulture6]

Marines launch assault into Taliban-held area

By Jason Straziuso - The Associated Press
Posted : Tuesday Apr 29, 2008 8:17:27 EDT

CAMP DWYER, Afghanistan — Marines exchanged gunfire with militants Tuesday after pouring into a Taliban-held town in southern Afghanistan in the first major American operation in the region in years.

Several hundred Marines, many of them veterans of the conflict in Iraq, pushed into the town of Garmser in pre-dawn light in an operation to drive out the insurgents, stretching NATO’s presence into an area littered with poppy fields and classified as Taliban territory.

U.S. commanders said Taliban fighters had been expecting an assault and had planted homemade bombs in response.

Marines moved into town by helicopter and Humvee for Tuesday’s assault in the southern province of Helmand, the first major task undertaken by the 2,300 Marines in the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit which arrived last month from Camp Lejeune, N.C., for a seven-month deployment. Another 1,200 Marines arrived to train Afghan police.

Maj. Tom Clinton, the American commander at Forward Operating Base Dwyer, a British outpost 10 miles west of Garmser, said militants and Marines exchanged fire in two parts of Garmser on Tuesday. There was no immediate word on casualties.

“We haven’t seen anybody who isn’t carrying a gun,” Clinton said of the mostly deserted town. “They’re trying to figure out what we’re doing. They’re shooting at us, letting us know they’re there.”

Clinton said the Marines had also found bomb-making material and rockets in town. He said he was worried about the possibility of attacks using homemade bombs.

Before Tuesday, the Marines had few glimpses of the enemy. On patrols outside the compound, Gunnery Sgt. Javier Duarte, 34, of Miami spotted men watching the Marines from pickup trucks. When he maneuvered his Humvees into attack position, the trucks took off.

“The only thing that gave us resistance was about 30 camels that came at us,” Duarte said.

Lt. John Branson, 25, of Washington, D.C., says the Marines shouldn’t underestimate an enemy that has spent decades fighting — against Soviet invaders in the 1980s, against other Afghans in a civil war during the 1990s and against U.S., NATO and Afghan government forces since 2001.

“Most of the people we’re going to be fighting have been fighting for 30 years,” he said. “The stupid ones are dead.”

One Marine in Charlie Company, Cpl. Matt Gregorio, 26, of Boston, alluded to the fact the Marines have been in Afghanistan for weeks without carrying out any missions. He said the mood was “anxious, excited.”

“They’ve been training for this deployment the last nine months,” said Charlie Company commander Capt. John Moder, 34, of North Kingstown, R.I. “These guys saw a lot of progress in Ramadi, so they understand it's not just kinetic (war fighting) but it's reconstruction and economic development.”

The Marines’ mission is the first carried out by U.S. forces this far south in Helmand province in years. An operation late last year to take back the Taliban-held town of Musa Qala on the north end of Helmand involved U.S., British and Afghan forces.


Paul Wiseman of USA Today contributed to this story.