forces in Afghanistan will launch a new military operation later this year to get full control of Kandahar, the former "capital city" afghans have raised their flag over a bazaar badly damaged by fighting with Taliban militants in a major US-led offensive to drive out the Taliban from a southern Afghan town.

The leader of southern province Helmand, Governor Mohammad Gulab Mangal, toured the battlefield on the fifth day of the offensive but said Marjah had not yet been 'cleared' completely of militants nor the mines they had planted.

Shops and other buildings in the centre of the bazaar were badly damaged from fighting that has raged between troops and Taliban militants, and barbed wire sealed off roads believed to be heavily mined.

Asked by reporters how long it would be before the township, controlled for years by Taliban and drug lords, would be completely under government control, Mangal said troops were still active.

'From the military point of view, one cannot set an exact timeline but work to clear mines continues,' he said.

Shops on either side of the roads running though the bazaar were mostly closed and empty, and some were badly damaged in the fighting.

A few hundred metres along the road, troops had set up a barbed-wire cordon. Marines ordered a man who approached to lift his shirt and push up his sleeves to prove he was unarmed, before allowing him to approach.

The commander of the 4,400 Afghan forces taking part in Operation Mushtarak indicated it was too early to say Marjah had been taken.

Standing next to Mangal at the crossroads of the deserted bazaar, General Muhaiuddin Ghori, Afghan army commander in Helmand, said his men had entered the area three days ago.

'Right now we are in Loy Char,' he said, as he signalled to a trooper to raise the green, red and black Afghan flag on a long bamboo pole.

The soldier who raised the flag shouted: 'Allahu Akbar' (God is greater).

Marjah has been the focus of the operation launched by 15,000 Afghan, US and NATO forces on Saturday in the biggest test

An Afghan soldier who gave his name as Ismatullah said he entered the Marjah area on Sunday and saw many residents wounded from the fighting.

'They (the militants) were not allowing people to leave their homes. I myself saw lots of people who had been hit (in the fighting) because they were firing from people's homes and we were returning fire.

Mangal said no air strikes had been called in because Marjah 'is a residential area, people are there'.