Marines Reach out to Marjah Population

Road by road, house by house, coalition forces are picking their way through Marjah, a town that has become a minefield.

Coalition officials say that the fighting is dying down, but they are finding a huge number of booby traps. Most are safely detonated, but some find their targets, reports CBS News correspondent Mandy Clark.

The insurgents often hide in nearby houses and trigger the bomb when a military vehicle is passing. The Marines search a compound because command wire that was linked to 30 pounds of explosives led into a building there.

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But sometimes there are bombs hidden in the houses too, so the Marines attach a small charge and what could have been a deadly trap is reduced to a pile of rubble.

The best way of locating the bombs, of course, is to get local residents to help. A Marine

"We want to push the Taliban out, and to try and find all the mines and the IEDs," a Marines colonel said to local residents.

It's a message that the elders are taking back to their villages and the Marines say that every day, they are getting more assistance from the local population.

All over Marjah, the Afghan national flag is being raised, sending a message that the Taliban is gone. But this is only the beginning of the long struggle to win the trust of these war-weary people.