Marja:
An errant American rocket strike on Sunday hit a compound crowded with Afghan civilians in the last Taliban stronghold in Helmand province, killing at least 10 people, including five children, military officials said.
Avoiding such civilian deaths, which came on the second day of a major allied offensive around Marja, has been a cornerstone of the war strategy by the top American commander, General Stanley A. McChrystal. He apologized to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, saying, "We deeply regret this tragic loss of life."
The strike came after American Marines and Afghan soldiers had been taking intense small-arms fire from a mud-walled compound in the area, American officers said. The answering artillery barrage instead hit a building a few hundred yards away, striking with a roar and sending a huge cloud of dust and smoke into the air. As the wind pushed the plume away, a group of children rushed outside.
"The compound that was hit was not the one we were targeting," said Captain Joshua Biggers, the commander of Company K, 3rd Battalion, 6th Marines, which had been engaged in a rolling gun battle with Taliban insurgents throughout the day.
It was unclear whether one or more rockets hit the building. Officers said the barrage had been fired from Camp Bastion, a large British and American base to the northeast, by a weapons system known as HIMARS, an acronym for High Mobility Artillery Rocket System.
Its munitions are GPS-guided and advertised as being accurate enough to strike within a yard of their intended targets. McChrystal said in a statement that he was suspending use of the weapon system "until a thorough review of this incident has been conducted."
There were conflicting reports about the number of dead in the strike. Daoud Ahmadi, the spokesman for Helmand province's governor, said in a telephone interview that 10 people had been killed. But American soldiers in the area said 11 civilians had died, and the joint military command, known as the International Security Assistance Force, put the toll at 12.
Sunday was an intensive day of fighting around Marja, in an area of irrigated steppes and rural villages where a combined force of about 15,000 Afghan and foreign troops, led by American Marines, is now trying to break Taliban control.
As more troops continued streaming into the town of Marja itself, setting up checkpoints and outposts along the way, patrols and exhaustive house-to-house searches for insurgents and weapons intensified, military officials said.
For a second day, Afghan and NATO military officers also held a series of meetings with local Afghan leaders in Marja, said Flight Lieutenant Wendy Wheadon, a British officer and spokesman for the international security force.
A main thrust of the offensive has been to smooth the way for permanent government rule in the area, which has remained a durable Taliban stronghold in the years since the 2001 American invasion.
Despite the heavy fighting, reports of allied casualties have been low. The International Security Assistance Force issued a news release indicating that a non-American soldier was killed Sunday by a homemade bomb in southern Afghanistan, but did not specify whether that was a result of the Marja offensive.
A senior Afghan commander, General Sher Mohammed Zazai, said that so far, there had been no deaths of Afghan troops, who make up the bulk of the combined force. British and American Marines were reported killed on the first day.
The battle started before dawn on Saturday, when about 6,000 troops began being flown into Marja itself.
Among the vanguard were Company K and an accompanying Afghan army platoon, which remained alone in their area of the Taliban stronghold for the second day, engaged in off-and-on gun battles from 8:30 a.m. until just before sunset.
Two of the American company's Marines were wounded by gunfire on Sunday, including one shot in an arm and another through his left shoulder shortly before the HIMARS rocket strike. No Afghan soldiers with the company had been wounded by nightfall.
The Marines had positioned themselves on Saturday night in one outpost and two small smaller patrol bases. The first shots from the Taliban began minutes after patrols left two of the positions on Sunday morning. Gunfire, along with occasional shoulder-fired rockets and mortars, boomed throughout the day, as the Taliban surrounded the company, probing and attacking from different directions as the hours passed.
The first large skirmish began at 9:30 a.m., as 2nd Platoon, the company headquarters and most of the Afghan platoon stopped at the edge of a small village and prepared to clear it. The Taliban opened up with automatic rifle fire from a few hundred yards away, shooting from concealed positions protected by open ground.
Marines and Afghan soldiers rushed to mud walls and returned fire. The Taliban's fighters could be seen at times running between fighting positions and irrigation ditches. A few were struck by the Marines' fire, and fell. Others kept up their fire. Bullets buzzed past the Marines.
"There's more than a squad-sized element of them!" shouted Private first class Joshua D. Horne, as he peered through his scope and fired his squad automatic weapon at insurgents running along an irrigation canal. "There's 30 or 40 of them out there!"
Horne emptied a drum of ammunition. "Reloading!" he shouted, as he fitted a new belt into the automatic weapon's feed tray. "Gun up!" he screamed, and began firing more.
Shooting opened up from other directions, as the Taliban tried to move on the company's flank. The insurgents seemed to cluster in groups and then disperse and re-form elsewhere.
"Happy Valentine's Day," said Sergeant Philip A. Hinde, a squad leader in 2nd Platoon, as the first big fight entered a brief lull.
Often, small groups of Taliban opened up from a different direction after the Marines had faced several minutes of fire. It was clear that the Taliban had ringed the company, and was probing and picking at the Marines as much of Company K moved toward a road and bridge that Biggers intended to seize.
As the company spread out, the fighting moved with it. At times, two or three gun battles raged at once, including at the outposts where the Marines had left their equipment. The Taliban harassed and attacked these positions several times during the day.
As the hours passed, Afghans on small motorcycles moved around the company, usually well outside of rifle range but visible as they moved about the steppe or from compound to compound. The Marines thought these were insurgents changing positions, or spotters reporting the company's locations and movements.
Mixed in with flurries of Taliban shooting were occasional single-shot near-misses. It happened again and again, as if at least one sniper was among the insurgents.
By early afternoon, the first Marine was hit. The wounded infantryman, a lance corporal who carried a squad automatic weapon, was struck as he crouched behind a wall, returning fire during a sustained fight in which incoming bullets were whistling and snapping just overhead, or striking the walls. He dropped to the ground.
"Corpsman up!" the Marines beside him shouted, calling for a trauma medic.
The Marine was on his back, blood flowing down his left arm. "Put a tourniquet on him!" someone shouted.
"Doc," said the squad leader, Sergeant Bryan N. Rogers, "Is he urgent?"
The corpsman, Hospitalman Jonathan C. Fowler, cut away the Marine's sleeve and examined his wound. He had been lucky - the bullet missed bone and passed through his left shoulder. Fowler applied a pressure bandage and wrapped it tight.
"Hey brother," a Marine crouching behind the wounded gunner said as the corpsman worked. "You got a Purple Heart."
"It's nothing," said the wounded man, whose name was withheld pending the government's notification to his family that he had been wounded.
After the bandage was in place and the bleeding had stopped, Rogers asked the Marine if he could still fire his weapon. When the Marine said he could, the sergeant ordered him back to the wall. "Post up," he said. A half-hour later, when the fighting subsided again as the Taliban temporarily ceased fire, the sergeant told him to sit.
Just after that, the HIMARS rocket barrage struck a nearby house, but not the one from which highly accurate fire had been holding the Marines against the wall.
Several Marines cursed. The wrong building had been hit. The company commander saw the children stream outside, ordered a cease-fire, and sent a patrol to go help.
With helicopter gunships flying overhead to cover them, a squad from 1st Platoon crossed several hundred yards of open ground and entered the compound, and found the dead Afghans, along with several others who had been wounded. One of the wounded civilians, a woman, had a limb severed, according to the Marines' radio reports to Biggers from inside the compound.
The Marines applied a tourniquet to the wounded woman, while the company tried to rush a helicopter to evacuate her and the other wounded people.
But by this time, the Taliban had moved to new positions and opened fire anew. A Black Hawk helicopter circled the compound under intensive small-arms fire. It landed briefly, but faced more fire, including from rocket-propelled grenades.
Biggers called to one of his radio operators, "Abort! Abort!" he shouted. "Tell him to abort!"
As the helicopter lifted away, accelerating low to the ground, an explosion detonated behind its tail rotor, and several automatic rifles fired as it passed. It banked and passed over the company as the Taliban kept firing, pushing the medical help away.
It returned, landed in a different spot near the company and picked up the wounded Marine, then lifted off as the company crouched under fire, with several hours of fighting yet ahead on a long, bloody day.