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US forces have launched a major military operation in southern Afghanistan in the first big push to drive the Taliban out of a key stronghold since Barack Obama became US president.

Four thousand marines, backed by Nato aircraft and a 650-strong Afghan force, are moving into towns in Helmand province, where the Taliban has been intensifying its challenge to the Kabul government and allied forces.

Pentagon officials say the plan - said to be the largest US marine offensive since Vietnam - is not just to inflict casualties against the enemy, but to dig in and hold on to territory.

"We're gonna go there and go to the far reaches where the Taliban is not looking for us, where they're not expecting a fight, where they're not sitting in prepared defensive positions and that's gonna keep them off-balance," spokesman Captain Zachary Martin said.

'Loss of support'

Al Jazeera's Zeina Khodr, reporting from Kabul, said the offensive had been attempted in the region in April last year, but US and UK troops had pulled out afterwards and the Taliban had moved back into the area.

She said this time the "US forces say they will stay there and train local forces until they can take over".

"The Taliban say they are now launching a counter-offensive ... and say they have inflicted casualties along the lines of US troops.

"US military officials have said there is some resistance and fighting," Khodr said.

"It is a strategic area, the Taliban get a lot of money from drug traders and can smuggle guns through the region ... [but] the Taliban say this is a war and they can move to another area.

"The US military know they have lost a lot of support among Afghans because of death tolls among civilians ... they know this war cannot be won militarily and they are trying to show Afghans they are their friends and not their enemies."

Brigadier General Larry Nicholson, the commanding officer of the Marine Expeditionary Brigade-Afghanistan, said "what makes Operation Khanjar [Strike of the Sword] different from those that have occurred before is the massive size of the force introduced, the speed at which it will insert and the fact that where we go we will stay, and where we stay, we will hold".

The move comes ahead of Afghan presidential elections planned for August 20 and US and Nato commanders have said they intend to seize Taliban-held territory in the south in time for the polls.

US soldier seized

The US military also disclosed on Thursday that a US soldier who went missing two days earlier had been seized by the Taliban.

"We are using all our resources to find him and provide for his safe return," said captain Elizabeth Mathias.

Khodr said it was the first time a US soldier has been held in captivity by an armed group in Afghanistan.

Captain Bill Pelletier, another spokesman, said US marines launched a helicopter assault early on Thursday in the lower Helmand river valley.

Helmand province is one of the Taliban's main heartlands in southern Afghanistan and produces the largest share of the country's opium crop which supplies about 90 per cent of the world's heroin.

Driven from power

The valley of irrigated wheat and opium fields along the Helmand river is largely in the hands of Taliban fighters who have resisted British-led Nato forces for years.

The US has sent 8,500 marines to Helmand province in the last two months, the largest wave of a massive buildup of forces that will see the number of US troops in Afghanistan rise from 32,000 at the beginning of this year to 68,000 by year's end.

The operation is a test of Obama's strategy to train the US military's focus on Afghanistan and Pakistan instead of Iraq, saying the Taliban insurgency in the former two were the main security threat facing the US.

The move to take on the Taliban in its stronghold comes as attacks by fighters are at their highest levels since the Taliban government was driven from power by US-led forces in 2001 after refusing to turn over Osama bin Laden in the wake of the September 11 attacks on the US.

Al Jazeera