General: Kandahar operation will take longer

The top commander in Afghanistan says the crucial effort to secure the Kandahar region will take longer than planned.

Men stand around coffins of blast victims outside a hospital in Kandahar city, Afghanistan, Thursday, June 10, 2010. A suicide attack ripped through a wedding party in full swing in the Taliban's heartland in southern Afghanistan late Wednesday, killing 40 people and wounding dozens more, officials said. Alauddin Khan/Associated Press

General Stanley McChrystal says the operation will carry into the fall, instead of wrapping up before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in August.

McChrystal says the process of gaining local support is taking longer than planned, and he doesn't want to "rush it."

Kandahar is Afghanistan's second-largest city and the birthplace of the Taliban insurgency. The NATO-led military force in Kandahar will roughly triple by this summer.

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