In the bloodiest fighting in almost a year, US Marines have killed more than 80 insurgents in an attack on a Taliban stronghold in the mountains of southern Afghanistan, the military said.
A spokesman insisted the three-week-old offensive was a victory that will help secure fall elections -- rather than a sign of the resilience of Taliban-led militants.
"The Marines have been aggressive, relentless and successful," US military spokesman Lieutenant-colonel Tucker Mansager said Saturday.
"They have demonstrated that there is no refuge for the terrorists," he said.
Only two Marines have been wounded in the latest fighting, the US military said.
Commanders sent 2,000 Marines into Afghanistan in the spring, helping swell the US-dominated force to 20,000 -- its largest yet -- in an attempt to put rebels on the defensive ahead of September elections.
Militants have stepped up their own operations, feeding a spiral of violence that has left more than 450 people dead across the country this year.
Troops elsewhere in the country also had come under rocket and mortar fire several times in recent days but suffered no casualties, Mansager said.
In another operation, US troops on Friday detained an expert bomb maker about 40 miles south of Kabul, Mansager said. He described the suspect as a "medium-value target" but declined to give more details. The American military and international peacekeepers based in Kabul have been warning since last year that militants are increasingly using the kind of roadside bombs that have proved so deadly in Iraq.
Seven American forces have been killed in southern Afghanistan since early last month -- including four when a mine ripped through their Humvee -- and dozens of Afghan soldiers have died in the region this year.
The Marines are based in Uruzgan, the home province of fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Omar, and have called in warplanes to pound a large group of militants in nearby mountains.
Most of the fighting has been near Daychopan, in neighboring Zabul province, a rerun of clashes last summer that left more than 100 militants and one American special operations soldier dead.
An endangered baby pygmy hippopotamus that shot to social media stardom in Thailand has become a lucrative source of income for her home zoo, quadrupling its ticket sales, the institution said Thursday. Moo Deng, whose name in Thai means “bouncy pork,” has drawn tens of thousands of visitors to Khao Kheow Open Zoo this month. The two-month-old pygmy hippo went viral on TikTok and Instagram for her cheeky antics, inspiring merchandise, memes and even craft tutorials on how to make crocheted or cake-based Moo Dengs at home. A zoo spokesperson said that ticket sales from the start of September to Wednesday reached almost
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
INSTABILITY: If Hezbollah do not respond to Israel’s killing of their leader then it must be assumed that they simply can not, an Middle Eastern analyst said Israel’s killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah leaves the group under huge pressure to deliver a resounding response to silence suspicions that the once seemingly invincible movement is a spent force, analysts said. Widely seen as the most powerful man in Lebanon before his death on Friday, Nasrallah was the face of Hezbollah and Israel’s arch-nemesis for more than 30 years. His group had gained an aura of invincibility for its part in forcing Israel to withdraw troops from southern Lebanon in 2000, waging a devastating 33-day-long war in 2006 against Israel and opening a “support front” in solidarity with Gaza since
RSS