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Marines go after Taliban

 
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS    Comment on this article Leave a comment
Published: July 3, 2009

NAWA, Afghanistan — U.S. Marines suffered their first casualties of a massive new military campaign Thursday as they engaged in sporadic gunbattles along 55 miles of Taliban-controlled heartland in southern Afghanistan.

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SOLDIER FEARED CAPTURED

A U.S. soldier is feared captured by insurgents after he walked off his base in eastern Afghanistan without his body armor and weapon, officials said Thursday. The military has intercepted communications in which insurgents talked about holding an American, one U.S. official said on condition of anonymity. The military was largely silent about details surrounding the kidnapping, believed the first such abduction of a U.S. service member in the nearly eight-year-old war. Two U.S. defense sources said the soldier "just walked off” post with three Afghans after he finished working. The man’s family has been notified he is missing.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

One Marine was killed and several others were injured or wounded on the first full day of the assault, the largest military operation in Afghanistan since the fall of Taliban government in 2001.

President Barack Obama told The Associated Press in an interview Thursday that he has a "very narrow definition of success when it comes to our national security interests” in the region. "And that is that al-Qaida and its affiliates cannot set up safe havens from which to attack Americans.”

An immediate goal, the military says, is to clear away insurgents before the nation’s Aug. 20 presidential election. Southern Afghanistan is a Taliban stronghold but also a region where Afghan President Hamid Karzai is seeking votes from fellow Pashtun tribesmen. Without such a large Marine assault, the Afghan government would likely not be able to set up voting booths to which citizens could safely travel.

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Related Topics: Politics, World Politics, Afghan Politics, Middle East Politics, Government and Politics



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