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thedrifter
03-21-03, 03:11 PM
March 21, 2003

Troops comb Afghan mountains for al-Qaida

By Jamey Keaten
Associated Press


BAGRAM, Afghanistan — Hundreds of U.S. troops searched the mountains and villages of eastern Afghanistan on Friday in the second day of a mission to hunt down al-Qaida remnants, an Army spokesman said.
The deployment of troops, who met no enemy fighters Thursday in the southern Sami Ghar mountains, came amid stepped up rocket attacks against coalition positions.

Attackers fired 11 rockets toward a U.S. base in the eastern town of Orgun-E, near the Pakistani border, on Thursday, but none landed closer than 500 yards from the base, Col. Roger King said.

“We had lot of rockets,” King told reporters at Bagram Air Base, headquarters for the coalition in Afghanistan. “Last night, if you go with the total number of rockets that were launched it was probably the most in one evening in two months or 2{.”

Another rocket attack and small arms fire took place early Friday on a U.S. position in the central town of Deh Rahwood, King said. No coalition soldiers were injured, and it was not clear who carried out the attack.

King said it was not clear whether the rocket attacks were linked to the start of a U.S.-led war in Iraq. Anti-American fighters have vowed to intensify their attacks on the coalition if Washington launched war on Saddam Hussein.

Rebel fighters hope a strike on Iraq will stir public anger with the United States, army officials said.

In eastern Khost, an Afghan border post came under rocket and small arms fire in predawn hours on Friday, King said. U.S. forces responded with mortars and gunfire, and A-10 aircraft provided close air support with rockets, bombs and 30 mm cannon fire.

There was no indication of who carried out the attacks or whether the Afghan border post guards had been injured.

A day earlier, up to 1,000 U.S.-led forces launched operation “Valiant Strike” in the caves and villages in southern Kandahar province in an intense hunt for remnants of the former Taliban and al-Qaida fugitives. Support personnel and about 600 soldiers on the ground were involved.

King said the forces were starting to move in on target areas and conducting searches on Friday.

Kandahar province is the former spiritual headquarters of the ousted Taliban regime, which is allied with the al-Qaida network suspected of carrying out the Sept. 11 attacks.

The timing of the new Afghan operation with the start of an Iraq campaign was a coincidence, King said, adding that it had been at least two months in the making.






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Copyright 2003 The Associated Press


Sempers,

Roger

thedrifter
03-22-03, 06:54 AM
Three Afghans Killed, Four Abducted in Attacks

Sat, Mar 22, 2003

SPIN BOLDAK, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Three Afghan soldiers were killed and four kidnapped in two separate pre-dawn attacks on security checkposts near the eastern border town of Spin Boldak, police said on Saturday.



A police official said the simultaneous attacks, in which two soldiers were also injured, were the work of the Taliban and renegade warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hizb-e-Islami group.


One of the injured men said grenades and machine guns were used in the strikes, 6 to 12 miles north of Spin Boldak, the official said.


A man claiming to have been an official in the former hardline Taliban regime told Reuters, on condition of anonymity, that remnants of the Taliban had carried out the attacks.


In the southeast, where troops are combing mountain caves and conducting house-to-house searches, a major military operation entered its third day and the U.S. Army said it had arrested two men and found a cache of weapons and ammunition.


Afghan officials had earlier said 12 people, including members of former Taliban regime and warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hezb-e-Islami group, had been arrested in Operation Valiant Strike, which began almost simultaneously with the Iraq (news - web sites) war on Thursday.


But U.S. military spokesman Colonel Roger King said only two had been arrested, adding there had still been no encounter with enemy forces in the operation in Kandahar province, the biggest military operation in months.


The two men were detained after a small cache of ammunition of small arms was found, he said.


Thousands of U.S. and allied troops are searching Afghanistan (news - web sites) for Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) and members of his al Qaeda network, prime suspects in the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, as well as leaders of the Taliban regime that sheltered them.


The latest operation centers on a series of villages and cave complexes 60 miles east of Kandahar, near Pakistan.


King said about 600 foreign troops were involved in the operation on the ground, but rejected Afghan comments that 3,000 Afghan soldiers were involved.



Sempers,

Roger