Word: valleys
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...nine men are buried in a stony field beyond an orchard of pomegranate trees in the village of Zambar, in eastern Afghanistan. Above their graves, multi-colored flags ripple in the mountain wind - deceptively cheerful reminders of the black day when Australia's Special Air Service came to this valley...
...patrol leader dismissed their concerns, and on the evening of May 14, the six men silently slipped from a moving four-wheel-drive vehicle on a deserted rocky track south of Taraka Gorge, a steep-sided valley about 130 km southeast of Kabul. Their task was to set up an observation point overlooking a village suspected of harboring Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters. Intelligence reports suggested there were gun emplacements and bunkers on the mountainsides and that the enemy were using part of the area as an escape route to Pakistan. The patrol was to observe...
...following night, RK3 hiked deeper into the mountains. On the bare hillsides, the troopers saw "countless tracks, fortifications and bunkers along the ridge lines," the patrol leader later wrote in his report. When they reached their objective, a ridge overlooking the valley and the village of Bhalkhel, they discovered a gun emplacement and a Russian-built heavy machine gun with a range of more than 3,500m. The patrol leader - according to his own report - ordered his men to set up an observation post about 40 m from the gun. Because there were no rocks or shrubs big enough...
...patrol they were on the way. But it would take them more than two hours to reach the besieged men: RK3 would have to hang on until nightfall. As the shadows lengthened, and the assault grew less intense, the troopers saw the SAS vehicles' lights heading up the Taraka valley and heard the reassuring drone of an AC-130 gunship, with its 105-mm cannon and thermal imaging technology. With the AC-130 crew calling down directions, the Australians put on their night vision goggles and prepared to pull...
...still unaware that the men they'd been fighting were not al-Qaeda or Taliban fighters but residents of Bhalkhel village. During the gun battle, they'd killed at least two villagers. But worse was to come. Two kilometers away, on a ridge on the other side of the valley, about 40 tribesmen from Sabari village were taking cover for the night in a series of bunkers hidden among wild olives and holly trees. They were guarding their homes, as they did every night, from their rivals in Bhalkhel, with whom they had been feuding for months over rights...