MARJAH, Afghanistan \u2013 After several days of sporadic and inconsistent battles with Taliban fighters, Marines commanders say coalition troops came under heavy fire late Wednesday afternoon by insurgents who appear to be trying to regroup. In an effort to create hostility between coalition troops and local Afghans, insurgents are also reportedly using civilians as human shields \u2013 deliberately trying to force coalition troops to fire upon non-combatants.<\/p>\n
Coalition forces still control significant parts of the city of Marjah, and as of Tuesday night, Marine commanders described the Taliban resistance as \u201cdisorganized.\u201d<\/p>\n
Insurgents, however launched several well coordinated attacks Wednesday, engaging U.S. Marines and Afghan soldiers who were going house-to-house searching for Taliban fighters and weapons caches.<\/p>\n
Despite the fierce battles Wednesday, the main obstacle facing the nearly 15,000 coalition troops remains homemade bombs and Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs).<\/p>\n
\u201cMost of the IEDs we\u2019ve found were concentrated on the routes of entry into the city, though we are still finding IEDs throughout the Marjah,\u201d said Maj. Billy Moore, Executive Officer of the 3rd<\/sup> Battalion, 6th<\/sup> Marine Regiment. According to Major Moore, the bombs deeper into the city are still very powerful and dangerous. One U.S. Marine was killed Tuesday as a result of a hidden IED.<\/p>\n Coalition troops are also beginning to reach out to local Afghan village elders in preparation of the next phase of the battle plan that focuses on rebuilding the greater Marjah community and installing a viable Afghan government.<\/p>\n Several Marine commanders are scheduled to host village \u201cshuras\u201d \u2013 a traditional Afghan meeting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" MARJAH, Afghanistan \u2013 After several days of sporadic and inconsistent battles with Taliban fighters, Marines commanders say coalition troops came under heavy fire late Wednesday afternoon by insurgents who appear to be trying to regroup. In an effort to create hostility between coalition troops and local Afghans, insurgents are also reportedly using civilians as human […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4603,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-330169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4603"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=330169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330169\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=330169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=330169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=330169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}