Troops Face Gunfights And Minefields In Offensive Against Taliban In Afghanistan -- Washington PostMARJA, AFGHANISTAN -- U.S. Marines and Afghan soldiers encountered pockets of stiff resistance and extensive minefields as they sought to press into this Taliban sanctuary in southern Afghanistan on Saturday.
Numerous gunfights with insurgents and painstaking efforts to clear roads of makeshift bombs slowed the advance of many coalition units and delayed them from reaching some key destinations in this farming area of 80,000 people. The operation was further complicated by the challenge of fording irrigation canals that ring the area and traversing a landscape covered in knee-deep mud.
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My Comment: The following sentence caught my attention ....
.... It was not clear how many insurgents were killed by Marine ground units and by a series of Hellfire missile strikes from unmanned Predator and Reaper aircraft that commanders employed to pursue fighters shooting at coalition forces ....
There is no mention of heavy airstrikes or helicopter gunships being involved ... just Predators and Reaper drones. I suspect that this is General McChrystal's way of minimizing civilian casualties.
1 comment:
hey.. yeah it'd be definitely interesting to see the drones/UAV to manned aircraft ratio in this one
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