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| Afghanistan |
| U.S. Troops Comb Afghan Villages, Caves |
| 2003-03-21 |
| Thousands of U.S. and Afghan soldiers combed mountain caves and searched houses in southern Afghanistan on Friday on the second day of a major military operation against Taliban rebels, Afghan officials said. "Operation Valiant Strike" was launched in the Samigar mountains of southeastern Afghanistan on Thursday morning, less than an hour before the first U.S. air strikes on Iraq. Afghan officials and military commanders said the Americans had arrested 12 people, including members of Afghanistan's former Taliban regime and renegade warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hezb-e-Islami movement. That'll probably be the extent of the haul, since all the rest of them have probably beat feet back across the Pak border by now... But U.S. military spokesman Colonel Roger King denied having made contact with "enemy forces," who he described as supporters of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda movement. He said search operations were still getting under way over "a pretty large area." Yep. All they saw was their backs... "There are villages in the low ground, there are caves in the high ground, and (U.S. forces) will be doing a systematic covering of the area of operations," King told reporters at the U.S. military's headquarters at Bagram air base, north of Kabul. The latest operation is centered on a series of villages and cave complexes about 60 miles east of Kandahar close to the Pakistani border, including the districts of Maruf, Arghistan and Shin Naray. Pakistani forces sealed their side of the border. Tight as a colander... "The operation continues and we have arrested about 12 of the enemy's soldiers, while the rest seem to have fled," Abdul Razzaq, commander of the Afghan border force in the nearest main town of Spin Boldak told Reuters. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |