AFGHANISTAN: US warplanes intensified attacks in eastern Afghanistan and US ground troops searched a former training camp near the Pakistani border where al-Qaeda fighters had been regrouping, the Pentagon said yesterday.
Ms Victoria Clarke, the chief Pentagon spokesperson, said US forces launched four air strikes in the Khost and Zhawar Kili areas on Sunday, one of the most active days since last month's battle for the cave complexes in the Tora Bora mountains.
Ms Clarke provided few details on the air strikes but they included another attack on the former terrorist training camp at Zhawar Kili, a sprawling compound and cave complex near the Pakistani border that US intelligence believes was being used by al-Qaeda fighters as a place to regroup.
She said US troops have gone in to search the complex, which was bombed in massive strikes on Thursday and Friday by B-52 and B-1 bombers, F/A-18 fighter jets and AC-130 gunships.
"I said US military would be in there on the ground looking to see what they found, and they are there now," she said.
The Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press agency reported that US troops landed on Sunday aboard four US helicopters and were combing the area with Afghan troops. The base had been struck before in November and in a 1998 cruise missile attack aimed at Osama bin Laden.
The area around Khost, which shares a mountainous border with Pakistan, has become to focus of the US military's hunt for fleeing al-Qaeda fighters.
A US Army Special Forces soldier, Sgt 1st Class Nathan Chapman, was killed on Friday in the Khost-Gardez area while on a mission to enlist the support of local tribal forces. A CIA official was seriously wounded in the same firefight.
Meanwhile, the number of al-Qaeda fighters under US military control continued to climb.
Ms Clarke said 346 fighters were being held by the military - 300 of them in Kandahar; 21 at the former Soviet air base at Baghram; 16 in Mazar-e-Sharif and nine aboard the USS Bataan.
The detainees included the former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, Mr Abdul Salem Zaeef, who was taken to the Bataan for questions, according to a US defense official.
Al-Qaeda's leading trainer, Mr Ibn al-Shayk al-Libi, also was reported to have been turned over to US officials by the Pakistanis.
But the big prizes - bin Laden and fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar - have so far eluded capture.