US-Afghan offensive against Taliban

In preparation for the offensive, a U.S.-Afghan force led by the U.S. Army's 5th Stryker Brigade moved south from Lashkar Gah and linked up Thursday with Marines on the northern edge of Marjah, closing off a main Taliban escape route. Marines and Army soldiers fired colored smoke grenades to show each other that they were friendly forces.

U.S. and Afghan forces have now finished their deployment along the main road in and out of Marjah, leaving the Taliban no way out except across bleak, open desert - where they could easily be spotted.

The Army's advance was slowed as U.S. and Afghan soldiers cleared the thicket of mines and bombs hidden in canals and along the roads and fought off harassment attacks along the way by small bands of insurgents. Two U.S. attack helicopters fired Hellfire missiles at a compound near Marjah from where insurgents had been firing at the advancing Americans.

Marines along the edge of the town exchanged fire with insurgents. There were no reports of casualties.

"I am not surprised at all that this is taking place," said the battalion commander, Lt. Col. Brian Christmas. "We are touching their trigger-line," referring to the outer rim of the Taliban defenses.

A far greater obstacle lies in the hundreds, if not thousands, of mines, makeshift bombs and booby traps which the Taliban are believed to have planted around Marjah.

"This may be the largest IED threat and largest minefield that NATO has ever faced," said Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson, commander of Marines in southern Afghanistan.

A British soldier was killed in a bombing Thursday in Helmand province, the Ministry of Defense announced in London. It was unclear whether the soldier was part of the Marjah operation.

In eastern Afghanistan, the spokesman for Paktia province, Roullah Samoun, said five Americans were wounded when a suicide attacker wearing a border police uniform blew himself up at a U.S. base near the Pakistan border. A U.S. statement said "several" U.S. service members were injured in an explosion at a joint U.S.-Afghan outpost in Paktia, but gave no further details.

To combat the mines around Marjah, Marines planned to use their new 72-ton Assault Breacher Vehicles, which use metal blows to scoop up hidden bombs or fire rockets to detonate them at a safe distance.

Once the main attack begins, U.S. commanders are eager to avoid civilian casualties, hoping instead to win over support of the Pashtun townspeople, who are from the same ethnic group as the majority of the Taliban. American officers have been instructing troops to hold their fire unless they are sure they are shooting at insurgents and not innocent villagers.

On Thursday, Afghanistan's interior minister, Hanif Atmar, met with a group of tribal elders explaining the goals of the operation and asking for their support.

"This operation is designed to open the way for those Afghans who want to join the peace process and to use the military power against those foreign terrorists who are hiding here," Atmar told the elders during a meeting in Lashkar Gah, the Helmand provincial capital about 20 miles northeast of Marjah.