BRITISH and other international forces in Afghanistan will begin today the largest offensive since the fall of the Taleban in 2001 to hunt down the regrouped rebels responsible for the recent surge in violence.

More than 11,000 troops — 3,300 of them British and the rest American, Canadian and Afghan — will take part in Operation Mountain Thrust as it sweeps across across four southern provinces, including Helmand, where British troops are based. The operation will attack “Taleban enemy sanctuary or safe haven areas,” said the US operational com mander in Afghanistan, MajorGeneral Benjamin Freakley.

It will focus primarily on Helmand and Uruzgan provinces, but will also operate across Kandahar and Zabul — all areas that are due to come under British-led Nato command at the end of July. The operation had been in the planning stages for 18 months but today would begin the start of “major and decisive” anti-Taleban missions, said General Freakley. The goal was to “ put simultaneous pressure on the enemy’s networks, to cause their leaders to make mistakes, and to attack those leaders”.

Colonel Tom Collins, a US military spokesman, said: “We are going to go into these areas, take out the security threat and establish conditions where government forces, government institutions and humanitarian organisations can begin the real work that needs to be done.”

The Taleban have been mounting increasingly brazen attacks on coalition and Afghan targets as the US prepares to transfer command in the South to Nato’s International Security Assistance Force this summer. More than 30 foreign soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan this year. On Tuesday a US soldier was killed in the Sangin district of Helmand. About 100 British paratroops were dropped in to help to secure the site and provide back-up.

Sangin district, one of the most dangerous in Afghanistan, was where British Captain James Philippson was killed on Sunday.

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