300 US Marines return to volatile Helmand

US Marines returned to Afghanistan's volatile Helmand yesterday, where American troops faced heated fighting until NATO's combat mission ended in 2014, as embattled Afghan security forces struggle to beat back the resurgent Taliban.

The deployment of some 300 Marines to the poppy-growing southern province came one day after the militants announced the launch of their "spring offensive", and as the Trump administration seeks to craft a new strategy in Afghanistan.

Commander of US and Nato forces in Afghanistan General John Nicholson attended a handover ceremony marking the return of the prestigious force, the first Marines in Afghanistan since 2014, an AFP photographer said.

The Taliban effectively control or contest 10 of Helmand's 14 districts, blighted by a huge opium harvest that helps fund the insurgency.

The US has some 8,400 troops in Afghanistan with about another 5,000 from NATO allies, mostly taking part in the training mission.

The Helmand ceremony came as one of Afghanistan's most notorious warlords, ex-prime minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, returned to public life Saturday after more than 20 years in exile.

Hekmatyar, white-bearded and clad in his trademark black turban, called on the Taliban to lay down their weapons and join a "caravan of peace" as he spoke at a rally in Laghman province.

Known widely as the "Butcher of Kabul", Hekmatyar is chiefly remembered for his role in the bloody civil war of the 1990s, in which he stands accused of killing thousands of people in the capital Kabul. He is set to return there on Sunday.

A prominent anti-Soviet commander in the 1980s, his comeback following a landmark peace agreement with President Ashraf Ghani in September has been hugely controversial in Afghanistan, sparking revulsion from human rights groups and residents of the capital.