Taliban planning 'spectacular' attack in Afghanistan

A hardcore of Taliban fighters is plotting a "very spectacular" attack in Helmand, the British commander in Afghanistan said on Tuesday.

Despite the death or capture of hundreds of insurgents in the past year, those who had survived remained elusive, highly dangerous and were "evolving" their tactics, according to Brigadier Ed Davis.

He admitted that a high-level Taliban team was keeping one step ahead of his troops. "A hardcore are left that are hard to kill or capture and sophisticated in their targeting," he said. "They will look at more spectacular attacks and high-profile attacks targeting ISAF [International Security Assistance Force] and Afghan commanders.

"They are very competent, they have been doing this for a long time and their tactics, techniques and procedures have evolved like ours."

Brig Davis, the Royal Marine commander of British forces in Helmand, said there were now advanced intelligence methods of listening to the Taliban commanders but some were still difficult to track down. The insurgents wanted to go into the winter having "convinced people they are winning," he said.

He said the "very spectacular" operations would try to get inside the communities protected by security forces and would be "more obvious to the media". He added that the Taliban were still "a long way off from being defeated" and that the significant gains made in Helmand "are still reversible".

But British forces were still making considerable strides towards defeating the wider Taliban. "We have a very broad and deep understanding of insurgent networks allowing us to interdict them in community and at range,"

Since April, troops from 3 Commando Brigade had seized 2.5?tons of home-made explosive, the equivalent to 300 IEDs (improvised explosive devices), he said. While the local people had become "tired of the fighting" they were still informing British and Afghan forces where bombs were hidden. The insurgents were now "struggling to get lethal aid through", Brig Davis said.

This year's summer "fighting season" had seen less violence than last year, with incidents down 43 per cent, which meant 70 fewer attacks each week.

In the three months to July, British forces suffered 13 dead compared with 44 in the same period last year, although they were still deployed in the volatile town of Sangin in 2010. With the start of the fasting month of Ramadan, the level of violence was expected to drop further.

British forces, which will remain at about 9,500 for the next year, hope to hand over Helmand to Afghan control before they leave at the end of 2014.