|
Cdn. troops launch artillery barrage in Panjwaii
Updated Tue. Dec. 19 2006 8:39 AM ET
CTV.ca News Staff
Heavy, sustained fire from Canadian artillery and light armoured vehicles pounded a militant stronghold in southern Afghanistan early Tuesday.
A platoon of light armoured vehicles and a troop of tanks rumbled out of the forward operating base in the Panjwaii district, reports The Canadian Press, with the sound of 50-calibre machine guns, tanks and artillery echoing through the area within minutes.
Brig.-Gen. Tim Grant indicated Monday that Canadian troops were about to join fellow NATO soldiers in Operation Baaz Tsuka (Falcon Summit), an offensive battling the Taliban.
As part of the mission's first phase, information pamphlets were dropped throughout the Panjwaii district warning Taliban forces to leave or face the consequences.
CTV's Murray Oliver, in Afghanistan, said NATO is battling two types of Taliban -- the hard-core Jihadists and locals who could be convinced not to fight. He said NATO hopes to push out the hard-core fighters while persuading the locals to give up their arms.
The locals "could be persuaded if they can see the interest for their community to put down their guns, pick up their tools and go back to living a normal life," said Oliver.
Grant, commander of Canadian troops in Afghanistan, said he hoped the mission would "achieve the aim of dislocating the Taliban and have the village elders take more responsibility for influence and security."
"Sometimes they (local fighters) are referred to as Tier-2," said Grant. "I've also heard them described as the Afghan equivalent of European soccer hooligans."
"There's not much else to do. They get paid pretty well by the Taliban. We're just trying to see if we can find an alternate lifestyle for them."
Afghans murdered
Meanwhile, Taliban militants beheaded a man and fatally stabbed another, hanging his body from a tree in an apparent warning to villagers not to give government or NATO information about Taliban activities, a man who witnessed the incident told the Associated Press on Tuesday.
Villager Lal Jan said the militants brought a young man to Talukan village's central market in the southern province of Kandahar on Monday, then stabbed him.
The militants told villagers that the men had been spying on the Taliban, and said the killings were a lesson for others co-operating with the government or NATO forces, he said.
They hanged the stabbed man's body from a tree and beheaded another man, he said.
Government and NATO officials could not immediately confirm the killings.
This weekend in Kandahar province, coalition troops seizing weapons caches containing mines and explosives, NATO said Monday in a statement.
During a clash Sunday in Sperwan Ghar district, coalition troops had to call in air strikes. Four insurgents were killed and three coalition troops were wounded over the weekend, said NATO.
__________________
To sit down with these men and deal with them as the representatives of an enlightened and civilized people is to deride ones own dignity and to invite the disaster of their treachery - General Matthew Ridgway
|