UK paratroopers set mountain trap for Taliban

CAMP BASTION, Southern Afghanistan, June 21 (Reuters) British paratroopers today told how they knocked out a Taliban mortar team in a deadly fire fight during a five-day covert search and destroy mission.

The tale of the battle, related a day after they flew back to a desert base from their hidden mountain positions, gives a sense of the aggressive tactics they have been employing against guerrilla fighters.

The paratroopers said they had killed 10 suspected insurgents and destroyed a mobile mortar system that guerrillas were using to target a dam.

They are part of a force sent to southern Afghanistan for a NATO peacekeeping mission due to begin in weeks. But this month they have been engaged in Operation Mountain Thrust, a US-led campaign to flush Taliban guerrillas out of the hills, billed as the biggest Western offensive in Afghanistan since 2002.

Captain Nick French, 29, commander of a mortar platoon, told a small group of reporters how his men were dropped by helicopter before dawn on June 15 to the highlands near the Kajaki dam in the remote mountains of northern Helmand province.

The team -- consisting of scores of riflemen, mortar crews, anti-tank missile specialists and snipers -- was sent to find and destroy a Taliban mortar crew that for two weeks had repeatedly struck at Afghan police guarding a dam.

After nearly three days of lying in wait hidden in the hills, they spotted the enemy.

''On the evening of the 17th just before last light we saw 20 Taliban and deployed to the area just north of the town. They were using a 4x4 truck to transport the mortar,'' he related.

MORTAR ROUNDS The Taliban struck first, firing a mortar round that landed 60 metres from his men. French gave an order to return fire with mortars. The first British strike missed; the Taliban fired five rounds back; the British adjusted their fire and scored a hit.

''Their tactics were quite slack. They kept using the same position. They just wanted to kill one of us,'' said Private Johnnie Bevans, 23.

Surviving Taliban took flight and returned fire. In a two-hour fire fight that ensued, the paratroopers returned fire at long range with heavy machine guns and more mortars.

The British later learned from Afghan police that they had killed six men with the mortar and another four in the ensuing battle. The paratroopers suffered no casualties. Apache attack helicopter were summoned for air support but did not fire.

French said his troops remained hidden in secret positions in the hills for three more nights to ensure that the Taliban did not mount a counter attack against the villagers whose police had called on the British for help.

They also had to demonstrate to villagers suspicious of outside forces that they were not themselves a threat.

''The village was concerned that we would do what the Russians did: occupy the high ground and just bomb the place down to the ground,'' he said.

Britain launched its new Afghan mission along with Canadian and Dutch troops to spearhead NATO's move into southern parts of Afghanistan that have seen only a small presence of foreign troops since the Taliban fell in 2001.

But the new mission has come at a time when the Taliban are mounting more numerous and bolder attacks. British commanders acknowledge that they have met a Taliban foe fiercer than they expected, and say they have responded by moving more quickly than they initially planned into remote areas.

REUTERS KD BST0017