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Taliban flee battle using children as shields – NATO | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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KABUL,(Reuters) – Taliban fighters used children as human shields to flee heavy fighting this week during an operation by foreign and Afghan forces to clear rebels from around a key hydrolectric dam, NATO said on Wednesday.

The Taliban have used human shields before, but never children, local residents say.

The fighting occurred during Operation Kryptonite on Monday, an offensive to clear insurgents from the Kajaki Dam area in southern Helmand province to allow repairs to its power plants and the installation of extra capacity. “During this action … Taliban extremists resorted to the use of human shields. Specifically, using local Afghan children to cover as they escaped out of the area,” Colonel Tom Collins, a spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), told reporters in Kabul.

The fighting was in an area where 700 mainly foreign fighters, including Chechens, Pakistanis and Uzbeks, arrived from Pakistan this week to reinforce Taliban guerrillas targeting the dam, according to local officials.

Earler on Wednesday, NATO said it had killed a senior Taliban leader in a pre-dawn air-strike between the dam and the nearby town of Musa Qala, to the west, which the rebels have held for 13 days. NATO said the man had been involved in the capture of Musa Qala and clashes around Kajaki. It said there were no civilian casualties, but local tribal leader Haji Sultan said several villagers were killed. A witness said seven more Taliban and seven civilians died in the strike. “We continue to conduct specific shaping operations — to go after specific Taliban extremists, the leadership who are impacting the enemy’s operations,” ISAF spokesman Colonel Tom Collins told reporters later.

The Kajaki dam has seen major fighting in recent weeks between the Taliban and NATO forces, mainly British and Dutch.

NATO-led forces have been conducting operations in the area for several months to allow reconstruction on the dam and the power transmission lines to boost output, after fighting halted repair and development work last year.

The Taliban cannot destroy the dam, which would also flood a large area of the Helmand Valley, but its tactics are aimed at making it too unsafe for work to go ahead.

The dam was first built on the Helmand river in the 1950s.

Its hydroelectric plants, with a generating capacity of 33 megawatts, were installed in 1975. Once fully operational, the dam will bring electricity to 1.8 million people, NATO says.