US making tall claims on fighting: French military

PARIS, March 11: French defence sources say that the allied bombing of Gardez has proved to be much less successful than official Washington sources have heretofore admitted.

The "pockets of resistance" that the Pentagon says it's destroyed in recent days "continue to exist," according to French military sources, indeed the resistance being put up by the Taliban and their allies "is so formidable that the number of points of resistance has multiplied in recent days, instead of decrease," says one of the sources.

"The combatants we are presently fighting give the impression they have nothing to lose and we expect for them to go to the end of their task," reports the source, who also notes that intelligence gathered by French forces would indicate that most of the remaining combatants are non-Afghans.

In fact, says the French source, the problem with the allied attack on Gardez and its region is one of reliable intelligence, with Washington, he says, making claims "that, in our eyes, don't hold up".

Firstly, he says, the surveillance of the pockets of resistance in and about Gardez,"has not been as effective as Washington would have it." Then too, he adds, "when night falls, the surveillance is so ineffective that the combatants manage to regroup or indeed create new pockets of resistance".