The Afghan government took official control of the southern Taliban stronghold of Marjah on Thursday, installing an administrator and raising the national flag while U.S.-led troops worked to root out final pockets of militants.
     
The ceremony was held in a central market as U.S. Marines and Afghan troops slogged through bomb-laden fields in the north of the town. The Marines and their Afghan partners are trying to secure a 28-square mile (45-square kilometer) area believed to be the last significant pocket of Taliban insurgents in Marjah.
     
Militants and allied troops are still getting caught up in gunfights in some areas, NATO said.
     
But the number of residents returning has increased in recent days, shops have opened to sell telephones and computers alongside fresh fruit and vegetables, and officials hailed the installation of Abdul Zahir Aryan as the town's administrator as a key sign of progress.
     
Some 700 residents gathered to see Aryan formally appointed as the top government official in Marjah, along with government officials and Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson, commander of U.S. Marines in Marjah, according to officials at the event.
     
Aryan and a team of advisers held their first meeting in the town Monday and have been staying overnight in a building there since Tuesday, said Marlin Hardinger, the senior U.S. government representative for Helmand province, which contains Marjah.
     
"Today's event was the civilian Afghan government re-establishing itself officially in front of the local residents," Hardinger said. The Afghan army had previously raised the country's green-and-red flag nearby, but that was only a claim of military control over that neighborhood, he said.
     
The ceremony opened with a reading from the Quran, and then Aryan and Helmand Gov. Gulab Mangal pledged to those gathered they were ready to listen to their needs and eager to provide basic services that they didn't have under the Taliban.
     
"I want to find jobs for those youths who aren't Taliban and those who are. I will work for all of them," Mangal said.
     
Asking for peace and stability, residents who attended the ceremony said they wanted Afghan and NATO forces to quickly clear the bombs planted by insurgents on Marjah's roads, fields, and compounds so they could return home.
    
 After the ceremony, the generals and high-level officials departed in helicopters, but Aryan remained.

AP