Thousands of US-led troops battling to capture a militant bastion in southern Afghanistan ran into fresh resistance Wednesday from Taliban using "human shields" and hidden bombs.

US, Afghan and NATO generals spent months planning the assault on the drugs and Taliban nexus of Marjah, home to around 80,000 people in southern Afghanistan, which gave insurgents time to mine roads, buildings and trees.
 

US President Barack Obama will convene his war cabinet to assess the offensive, the first major test of his "surge" raising the number of foreign troops in Afghanistan to 150,000 by August in a bid to end the eight-year war.
 

The arrest of top Taliban military commander Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, confirmed by Pakistan on Wednesday, could deal a huge blow to the insurgency that is trying to bring down the Afghan government and evict foreign troops.
 

But on day five of Operation Mushtarak ("Together") officers said progress has slowed because of multitudes of hidden bombs in the farming district of Helmand province that drug lords and the Taliban have controlled for years.
 

The top Afghan general commanding Operation Mushtarak also accused the Taliban of hiding behind human shields.
 

"They have taken people hostage. Our troops have seen them putting women and children on the roofs of houses and firing from behind them," said General Moheedin Ghori, commander of the 4,400 Afghan troops taking part.
 

"We have strict orders not to fire at civilian areas," said Ghori.
 

A Taliban spokesman denied their fighters were exploiting civilians.

Civilians targeted
"We have never used civilians as human shields, we do not use our own people as human shields," Yousuf Ahmadi told AFP by telephone from an undisclosed location. "We are there, standing against the invaders in direct fighting."
 

Ground commander US General Stanley McChrystal has ordered that civilians be protected in a strategy seeking to harness military might and development in order to crush the Taliban and establish Western-backed government control.
 

Operation Mushtarak has been billed the biggest military offensive since the 2001 US-led invasion, but beating the Taliban is seen as an enormous challenge in a country where the militia is spread wide and government control is weak.
 

Amnesty International says 10,000 civilians have fled the Marjah conflict zone, but that thousands more are caught up in the fighting.
 

"The Taliban have a record of knowingly endangering Afghan civilians in their operations, which can constitute a war crime," said Sam Zarifi, the London-based rights organisation's Asia-Pacific director.
 

About 300 families from Marjah and Nad Ali are taking refuge in southern Nimroz province, Governor Ghulam Dastagir Azad said - adding to more than 1,200 families in provincial capital Lashkar Gah.
 

The families were sheltering in empty buildings in Khash Rod district in the province's northeast, which borders Helmand, Azad said.

Seeking refuge
Wali Jan said he left Helmand for Nimroz in the midst of fighting between the combined forces and Taliban gunmen before Mushtarak began.
 

"There was fighting, planes were flying overhead all the time, there were tanks all over the place, bullets were hitting our houses - so when the chance came to leave, we did," he told the BBC's Uzbek language service.
 

"Where we are staying is just shelter, nothing more - no gas, no blankets, no flour and no food. We are all sick but there is no transport to get to anywhere where there is help."
 

Afghan and British soldiers sweeping through villages in the Nad Ali area, where Marjah is located, found bombs buried by roadsides, in fields, hanging from trees, even embedded in walls, an Afghan army colonel said this week.
 

In a battle update Wednesday, NATO acknowledged Taliban resilience.
 

"The insurgents are tactically adept, have resilience and are cunning, so continued tactical patience [...] is important," it said.
 

"Mining is significant in areas and the combined force must be very deliberate in its movement in order to minimise local Afghan and combined force casualties," it added.
 

Although death tolls are impossible to confirm, 30 Taliban, four NATO soldiers and at least 12 civilians have been reported killed in the battle.
 

Source: AFP