During a sporadic firefight, US Army Staff Sgt. and flight medic Robert B. Cowdrey, of La Junta, Colo., far left, with Task Force Pegasus, coordinates a medical evacuation mission as Marine infantrymen carry a combative and wounded Taliban fighter captured in Marjah, Wednesday. – APMARJAH - Military commanders raised the Afghan flag in the bullet-ridden main market of the Taliban's southern stronghold of Marjah Wednesday as firefights continued to break out elsewhere in town between holed-up Taliban and US and Afghan troops. With the assault in its fifth day, an Afghan army soldier climbed to the roof of an abandoned shop and raised a large bamboo pole with Afghanistan's official green-and-red flag. A crowd including the provincial governor, a few hundred Marine and Afghan troops and handfuls of civilians - Afghan men in turbans and traditional loose tunics who were searched for weapons as they entered the bazaar - watched from below. The market was calm during the ceremony and Marines there said they are in control of the neighborhood. But the detritus of fighting was everywhere. The back of the building over which the flag waved had been blown away. Shops were riddled with bullet holes. Grocery stores and fruit stalls had been left standing open, hastily deserted by their owners. White metal fences marked off areas that had not yet been cleared of bombs. Afghan soldiers said they were guarding the shops to prevent looting and hoped the proprietors would soon feel safe enough to return. The Marines and Afghan troops “saw sustained but less frequent insurgent activity” in Marjah Wednesday, limited mostly to small-scale attacks, NATO said in a statement. Marine officials have said that Taliban resistance has started to seem more disorganized than in the first few days of the assault, when small teams of insurgents swarmed around Marine and Afghan army positions firing rifles, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. Insurgents are increasingly using civilians as human shields - firing at Afghan troops from inside or next to compounds where women and children appear to have been ordered to stand on a roof or in a window, said Gen. Mohiudin Ghori, the brigade commander for Afghan troops in Marjah. “Especially in the south of Marjah, the enemy is fighting from compounds where soldiers can very clearly see women or children on the roof or in a second-floor or third
