U.S. Army closes in on Afghan town

NEAR LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan — U.S. Army soldiers launched a preliminary operation Tuesday in support of a planned U.S.-Afghan attack on the largest Taliban-controlled town in southern Afghanistan.

NATO and Afghan officials, meanwhile, urged militants holding Marjah, where an offensive is expected, to lay down their arms and warned civilians there to “keep your heads down.”

About 400 U.S. troops from the 5th Stryker Brigade as well as 250 Afghan soldiers and their 30 Canadian trainers moved into positions northeast of the town.

No casualties were reported. Large plumes of smoke could be seen in the area, and reporters traveling with the U.S. unit could hear the distant rattle of 50-caliber machine-gun fire and detonations from MK-19s, which fire 40 mm grenades from Stryker vehicles.

U.S. officials have not said when the main attack on the town of some 80,000 people will take place but have nonetheless heavily publicized plans to attack, causing hundreds of people to flee the opium-producing center in advance of the fighting.

On Tuesday, however, Taliban militants prevented townspeople from leaving Marjah, as families huddled inside their homes, witnesses said.

The offensive will be the first major one since President Obama announced he was sending 30,000 reinforcements to Afghanistan.

Villager Mohammad Hakim gambled that he could wait until the last minute because he was worried about abandoning his cotton fields.

He finally tried to move his wife, nine sons, four daughters and grandchildren out of Marjah earlier Tuesday but said militants told him to return home because they had mined the surrounding roads.

“All of the people are very scared,” he said in a telephone interview. “Our village is like a ghost town. The people are staying in their homes.”

NATO and Afghan officials have insisted their primary goal is to gain public confidence and promised to follow the military action with projects aimed at restoring government control and services in the area.

“The success of the operation will not be in the military phase,” NATO’s civilian chief in Afghanistan, former British Ambassador Mark Sedwill, said Tuesday.

“It will be over the next weeks and months as the people … feel the benefits of better governance, of economic opportunities and of operating under the legitimate authorities of Afghanistan,” he told reporters in a briefing at NATO headquarters in Kabul.

International officials believe the insurgency has been able to capitalize on widespread public anger over President Hamid Karzai’s corruption-ridden government and failure to provide services after more than eight years of war.

Two NATO service members were killed Tuesday in separate attacks, including an American who died in a bombing in the south.

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