Marine killed, GI missing
NAWA, Afghanistan - U.S. Marines suffered their first casualties of a massive new military campaign yesterday as they engaged in sporadic gunbattles along 55 miles of Taliban-controlled heartland in southern Afghanistan.
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 the Taliban government in 2001.
The offensive will test the Obama administration's new strategy of holding territory and letting the Afghan government sink roots in Helmand province. The insurgency has proven particularly resilient in this area, where foreign troops have never before operated in such large numbers.
And, officials in Washington said yesterday, it is feared that an American soldier was captured by insurgents after he walked off his base in eastern Afghanistan without body armor and weapons.
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. *
