May 14, 2008	Wednesday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 8, 1429

KANDAHAR, May 13: International and Afghan troops forged ahead with an offensive against the Taliban near the Pakistani 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 on Tuesday they had killed a dozen militants in Garmser on Monday.

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 militants, 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 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.”

Information is difficult to independently confirm in Garmser, a remote desert province where there are few roads and government authority is limited.—AFP