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In Marjah: 'Everyone is hiding. My family are very scared'
The populous Taliban stronghold of Marjah has, say residents, become a ghost town. Shops are shuttered, streets deserted and most inhabitants are hiding inside their mud-brick houses wondering when their "day of doom" will come.
Ghafar Jan, a 32-year-old farm labourer, said powerful explosions had cast a pall of dust and smoke over the area, and that the "lightning" of rockets was visible from his house.
"The Taliban are here and fighting back at the Americans," he told The Independent by phone. "We hear shouts of 'Allahu Akbar' and see their rockets falling on the coalition. But I cannot see the fighters themselves."
Like other inhabitants of the town, he said he and his family of nine had taken shelter in the basement of their mud-brick house, where they usually keep livestock. It is the safest place to hide. "People are poor and don't have strong houses," Mr Jan said.