US Marines who took back a key town in southern Afghanistan from Taliban militants in an operation earlier this year turned over responsibility for the area to British and Afghan forces on Monday.
The 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit is pulling out of Garmser in the southern province of Helmand and beginning to head back to Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.
The unit launched the operation in the Taliban-held area in late April and killed more than 400 militants during 35 days of fighting, according to Helmand's governor. The Marines suffered three hostile deaths, two from a roadside bomb and one from gunfire.
Col. Peter Petronzio, commander of the unit, said his forces had accomplished their goal.
"We are not going to solve all the problems with 2,500 Marines for seven or eight months, but what we can do is eat this elephant one bite at time, and we took a big bite and we did some great things in Garmser, and for the people there it will be a lasting, lasting success," Petronzio said.
The unit's original mission was to clear a road through the Taliban-occupied area so troops could travel south. But the Marines were met with such fierce Taliban resistance that commanders decided to keep them in Garmser for their entire deployment.
US commanders said they believed the militants defended Garmser with such intensity because it is a key transportation route for fighters, weapons and drugs. Garmser was filled with opium poppies this spring when the Marines arrived, but the forces did not touch the illegal crops.
The British military is responsible for Helmand province, but its 7,500 soldiers, along with 2,500 Canadian troops in neighbouring Kandahar, haven't had enough manpower to tame Afghanistan's south.
The Marines' mission in the south could be a precursor to future American operations in Kandahar and Helmand provinces, two of the country's most violent regions.
The Garmser operation allowed the Afghan government to move back into Garmser for the first time in years. The relative peace allowed a civic centre and a medical clinic to open.
"It's really starting to turn around, to show positive growth," Petronzio said. "I think it's a great success story of what a Marine unit can do, of what the coalition effort can do."
Petronzio said only one Afghan civilian was killed by his forces during the nearly five months his Marines were in Garmser.
Meanwhile, six civilians were killed in a roadside bomb blast in Afghanistan Monday while guards separately shot dead a would-be suicide bomber, officials said, in fresh Taliban-linked unrest.
The blast tore through a minibus in the southern province of Zabul, killing five Afghan men and a 15-year-old boy, Naw Bahar district governor Zarif Khan told AFP. Two other people were wounded.
Khan blamed the attack on the "enemies of peace" -- a reference to Taliban insurgents who regularly plant bombs intended to hit Afghan and international troops trying to put down extremist violence.
Roadside bombings are a hallmark of the Taliban insurgency.
In a separate incident, a suicide attacker was shot and killed as he attempted to enter the intelligence department in the Zabul capital, Qalat, late Sunday, deputy provincial governor Gulab Shah Alikhail told AFP.
A guard, suspicious of a man walking towards him, ordered the would-be bomber to "freeze" but the attacker ignored him, Alikhail said.
"After he ignored a warning shot, the guard shot him in the head and killed him. Later they found out he was wearing a 10-kilogramme (22-pound) explosives vest," he said.
The attempted attack comes a day after twin suicide blasts inside the police headquarters in the southern city of Kandahar killed two policemen, with three more people dying overnight, according to an official.
Nearly 40 people were wounded. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the blasts, which were a minute apart.
Also Sunday a suicide attacker blew himself up near Italian Nato soldiers in the western city of Herat but caused no casualties, according to local police.
The day before a suicide attacker, also said to be from the Taliban, had shot dead a guard outside a government building in the southwestern town of Zaranj and then blown himself up killing five more people.
Ottawa announced Sunday meanwhile that a Canadian soldier was killed and seven injured in a roadside blast in Kandahar province.
And a Dutch soldier was killed, and five comrades wounded, elsewhere in the south when their vehicle hit a roadside bomb, the Dutch defence ministry said.
Nearly 200 international soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan this year, according to an AFP tally based on official statements.
Southern Afghanistan sees some of the worst of an insurgency launched by the extremist Taliban, who were in government between 1996 and 2001 when they were removed in a US-led invasion.