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U.S. Forces Target Al-Qaeda Caves with "Daisy Cutter" Bomb
WASHINGTON, Dec. 10 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - U.S. forces dropped their largest conventional bomb - a 15,000-pound "daisy cutter" - on a cave in eastern Afghanistan over the weekend in hopes of killing senior al-Qaeda leaders, including Osama bin Laden, a senior U.S. military official said Monday.
Fighting in the area of the Tora Bora caves was too intense to tell whether the huge bomb had succeeded in killing any al-Qaeda leaders, said Rear Admiral John Stufflebeem.
Most of the Tora Bora mountain complex in eastern Afghanistan has been captured by Afghan militia forces, a military commander said Monday, as a Pentagon official told reporters that two or three senior Taliban leaders have been captured over the last few days.
U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said in a briefing Monday that U.S. forces did not capture the men, and that the United States was still a long way from tracking down all the Taliban cadres it has in its sights.
"We have captured, to my knowledge, at least one and, I think, two or three important Taliban leaders. But there are many others still to go; and Mullah [Mohammad] Omar, of course, is the one we're most interested in getting," said Wolfowitz.
Wolfowitz would not identify the captured Taliban leaders, but said they were in the custody of the Northern Alliance, the coalition of Uzbek, Tajik and Hazara opposition forces that drove the Taliban from northern Afghanistan and Kabul.
"It remains the case that large numbers of al-Qaeda terrorists, including senior leaders as well as senior leaders of the Taliban, are still at large in Afghanistan," he said. "It's going to be a very long and difficult job to find them, to root them out."
Al-Qaeda forces were fighting fiercely to defend the entrances to the caves in the Tora Bora area of eastern Afghanistan, Pentagon officials said.
Victoria Clarke, the Pentagon's chief spokesperson, said U.S. Marines, who were reported to have moved north toward Kandahar from their base in southern Afghanistan, were "working those roads. They're looking for Taliban and al-Qaeda leadership."
U.S. special forces on the ground have been directing air strikes at the cave complex to try to seal up the entrances and bury al-Qaeda forces inside, said Stufflebeem.
The 15,000-pound "daisy cutter" was dropped Sunday on a cave where "substantial" al-Qaeda forces, including senior leadership, were believed to be holed up, he said.
Asked whether bin Laden was believed to be among them, he said, "We'd certainly be hoping so."
"Sometimes you get a report where someone says he may have seen bin Laden or associates that are known to be close around him," he said.
Special forces typically call in an air strike "because someone believes that's where that leadership may be," he said. "In this case, we used a bigger weapon to do that with."
The "daisy cutter," which was first used in the Vietnam War to clear jungle to make helicopter landing zones, is so big it is pushed out the back of a C-130 transport plane on a pallet.
Stufflebeem said the bomb, which has been dropped once before in this campaign, may have been used for its psychological impact.
"This cave complex is literally on the sheer walls of a valley, and therefore the reverberation effect that goes up in those caves should have some kind of a negative effect," he said.
Clarke said Pentagon and other government lawyers are studying how they will deal with al-Qaeda or Taliban leaders who come under the control of U.S. forces.
"Our general counsel is looking up the status of the disposition of various kinds of detainees," she said.
John Walker (also known as Abdul Hamid), an American Taliban captured in northern Afghanistan, was being questioned by military officials at the Marine's Camp Rhino base in southern Afghanistan, she said, adding that his legal status was still "undetermined."
Military commander Hazrat Ali relayed news of opposition control of the Tora Bora complex, where bin Laden's al-Qaeda fighters are believed to be hiding.
"We control all of the Melawa and Tora Bora area, except for one place," Ali told reporters, adding that al-Qaeda still held the very top of the mountain.
"We have captured all of the al-Qaeda places with heavy weapons," he said, speaking through an interpreter.
The rout came on the seventh day of a fierce offensive by U.S. warplanes and Afghan militiamen on the Tora Bora area, which is riddled with caves used by the Afghan
mujahedin during the 1979-89 war against the Soviets.
Earlier, Ali's spokesman, Amin (who goes by only one name) told Agence France-Presse (AFP) by satellite phone that anti-Taliban forces had captured a number of strategic heights in the White Mountains range, in which Tora Bora is situated, from al-Qaeda fighters.
"We have taken Melawa, Palanai and a large portion of Anzare Sar," Amin said.
Four Saudi-born al-Qaeda fighters had been killed and their corpses were lying in the Melawa area of the mountains, he added.
"Our advance was so rapid that their associates could not even remove the dead bodies."
Amin said U.S. warplanes had been pounding the area heavily, but since Monday afternoon the bombing had stopped "due to our advances."
U.S. officials believe, and Afghan commanders are convinced, that bin Laden is holed up in the Tora Bora area with members of his al-Qaeda network.
Amin said Ali's forces had also positioned themselves near the mountainous border with Pakistan in order to block any attempt to escape into the neighboring country.
"Our commandos have established a picket at Zairdo Kandao to block the escape of al-Qaeda terrorists," he said, referring to the far edge of the Tora Bora range close to the northern Pakistani town of Parachinar.
Afghan fighters prevented reporters from leaving a position near the frontline and it was not possible to assess the situation firsthand.
Northern Alliance troops in the area have three main commanders - Hazrat Ali, Haji Mohammad Zaman and Haji Zaher. But there are problems coordinating operations on the ground.
The Afghan troops last Tuesday launched a joint offensive aiming at encircling the al-Qaeda fighters.
Amid conflicting reports, bin Laden's whereabouts remain a mystery.
Haji Zaher, son of Nangarhar provincial governor Haji Qadir, told reporters that bin Laden "was there three days ago, but now I do not have precise information."
But on Sunday, Haji Mohammad Zaman declared he was "100 percent sure" bin Laden was at Tora Bora.
Meanwhile, an AFP reporter in Kabul watched as U.S. Marines armed with automatic weapons were deployed behind sandbags on the roof of the U.S. Embassy, which has stood empty for the past 12 years.
Major Vic Harris, a U.S. spokesman, said the Marines arrived from nearby Bagram air base "to make an assessment" of the embassy and sweep it for possible booby-traps, and said they were there to secure the building and no decision had been taken about reopening the mission.
The complex was clean, he said, and safe for the advance party, which he described as "half civilian, from the State Department, and half military."
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