July 3 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. troops pushed deeper into a Taliban stronghold in southern Afghanistan in a bid to root out insurgents and stabilize the region, after one Marine was killed on the operation’s first day.

Forces advanced into three district centers and are talking with local leaders to find out what they “want and need,” Captain Bill Pelletier said by telephone today from Camp Leatherneck, a Marine base in Helmand province. Again today, troops faced only “light skirmishes” with gunmen who then fled, he added.

The Helmand offensive began before dawn yesterday when about 4,000 U.S. personnel and 650 Afghan soldiers poured into the Helmand River valley in helicopters and armored vehicles. The operation is the first test of President Barack Obama’s new strategy to defeat the insurgency and involves holding Taliban- dominated areas to let Afghan forces and officials restore the authority of the Afghan government.

U.S. troops and weapons bound for Afghanistan will be allowed to fly over Russian territory, providing an important new corridor, the New York Times reported today, citing unidentified Russian and U.S. officials. The agreement will be announced when Obama visits Moscow next week, the Times said.

Opium Crop

The assault also threatens a financial pillar of the Taliban movement. By today, Marines, Afghan and allied British forces held positions along a 120-mile (193-kilometer) stretch of the Helmand River, whose water irrigates farms that last year grew two-thirds of Afghanistan’s opium crop.

Opium, the raw form of heroin, has earned the Taliban and other drug smugglers as much as $470 million a year, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

The Marines advanced as far as Khanishin, a town on the Helmand River from where dirt roads used by Taliban and smugglers stretch 80 miles south across the desert to the Pakistani border. Pakistan’s army is “reorganizing” its forces near Helmand to ensure that “Taliban fleeing the U.S. operation cannot cross the border,” military spokesman Major General Athar Abbas said by telephone from the capital, Islamabad, yesterday.

One Marine died and several others were injured yesterday, Pelletier said. Two U.K. troops were killed in a blast during a parallel operation by their units near Lashkar Gah on July 1. They were identified late yesterday by the Ministry of Defence as trooper Joshua Hammond and Lieutenant Colonel Rupert Thorneloe. Thorneloe was commanding officer of the 1st Battalion Welsh Guards and the highest ranking Army officer to be killed in action since the 1982 Falklands war.

Man Shot

An Afgan man was shot and wounded yesterday when he walked toward a group of Marines at a “rapid pace” and didn’t stop after a warning shot was fired, Pelletier said in an e-mail today. The man was taken to a Lashkar Gar hospital, where he is in stable condition, Pelletier said.

The government of President Hamid Karzai controls only eight of Helmand’s 13 districts, provincial government spokesman Daud Ahmedi said by telephone from Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital. The U.S. forces are in the main population centers in the districts of Nawa, Garmsir and Khanishin and will soon be followed by civilian officials from non-governmental organizations.

Missing Soldier

In the country’s east, forces are “exhausting all available resources” to recover a U.S. soldier missing since June 30, the military said in a statement, adding that officials believe he was “captured by militant forces.”

The Helmand offensive is the first major operation since the Obama administration shifted emphasis from the war in Iraq to combating Taliban and al-Qaeda extremists in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan.

Before the operation, international forces in the districts were limited to a few British bases. Insurgents have slowly regained control since the Taliban regime was ousted in late 2001, forcing out local Afghan government and police officials.

To contact the reporters on this story: Ed Johnson in Sydney at ejohnson28@bloomberg.net; James Rupert in New Delhi at jrupert3@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: July 3, 2009 14:42 EDT