Hundreds of Canadian soldiers have begun searching booby-trapped caves used by Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters in eastern Afghanistan, coalition forces said today.
Some 500, mainly Canadian, infantry soldiers are taking part in "Operation Harpoon," which is "designed to destroy the remaining pockets of Taliban and al-Qaeda elements," in the Shahi Kot Valley and Arma mountains, spokesman Lieut Luc Charron said.
The search is part of "Operation Anaconda", the US-led military offensive against the last known stronghold of Taliban and al-Qaeda forces.
US Maj Bryan Hilferty, a spokesman for the US-led forces, said the focus today of Operation Anaconda was now on "sensitive site exploitations" of caves used by the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
"We have discovered caves and mortar positions, we have destroyed the mortar positions, and we'll be doing more cave work today. We will probably blow them up but we want to exploit them," he said. But he refused to comment on the type of intelligence found in the cave searches so far.
Afghan soldiers continue to occupy the Shahi Kot Valley, some 30 kilometers south of the eastern Paktia provincial capital Gardez, Maj Hilferty said.
"Operation Anaconda continues. We still have more than 1,000 soldiers on the ground actively searching for the terrorists but we've seen little movement in the last 24 hours," he said.
Few Taliban and al-Qaeda corpses had been found, although coalition forces were confident they had killed "hundreds," he said.
AFP