BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan, May 18 (IslamOnline News Agencies) - Hundreds of coalition troops blocked off an area of southeast Afghanistan as part of a major new operation. This followed Taliban leader Mullah Omar threat against the U.S. and assertion that Bin Laden was still alive, according to press reports.

U.S. spokesman Major Bryan Hilferty told reporters Saturday that "approximately 10" people had been killed in an attack by an AC-130 gunship early Friday on an uninhabited ridge north of Khost.

Apparently, Hilferty was referring to the U.S. warplane that bombed a village Friday, May 16, in the eastern Afghan province of Khost, killing at least 10 people and wounding many others at a wedding ceremony.

The bombing, which occurred overnight in Bal Khel village in Sabari district, 30 kilometers northeast of Khost, targeted a wedding that was in progress in the village, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).

During the wedding, people fired into the air in traditional celebration and U.S. claimed the helicopters flying over the area could have allegedly mistaken it for hostile fire.

A U.S. aircraft later bombed the area for several hours, AFP added.

The terrified residents were confined to their homes by fear and had not been able, according to AFP, to remove dead bodies and evacuate the injured to hospitals for some time after the attack. 

However, Hilferty, who refused to give the exact location of the ongoing Operation Condor, denied that those killed had been celebrating a wedding.

"It was not a village, it was an uninhabited ridge line. There were people on that ridge line firing at us," he said, AFP reported.

Asked how he could be sure that the 10 victims were fighters, Hilferty replied: "Usually people who are firing at you are your enemy... I cannot tell you for sure, but they were firing heavy machine guns at us in a known al-Qaeda, Taliban area."

For his part, British spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Ben Curry said the Australian forces had been fired on and pursued for around five hours on Thursday afternoon.

"Given the nature of the attack - the fact that they were fired upon by heavy machine-gun power and RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) rounds, also the length and duration of the attack - the initial assessment was that this was a well-armed force."

Curry said around 500 Royal Marine commandos had been flown in to the mountainous area, making the bulk of a 1,000-strong force deployed there.

U.S. and Afghan fighters had also joined the mission, while the Australian troops remained on the ground.

"We are conducting clearing operations with the coalition and combat air support. I can confirm that there have been no combat casualties," Curry said.

He said British troops had yet to encounter any al-Qaeda or Taliban troops but that one suspected opposition fighter had been killed by the Australians on Thursday.

Hilferty said coalition troops had "blocked off escape routes" in an area described as tens of square kilometers.

"We have people blocking the area. You can say the area is surrounded." He confirmed that civilians were within the cordon and added that a village was around two kilometers (over a mile) from the scene of the initial exchanges.

Meanwhile, the supreme leader of Afghanistan's ousted Taliban warned the United States that "fire will engulf the White House" and said that al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was still alive, according to a daily a newspaper.

"The battle (in Afghanistan) has (just) started, its fire has been kindled and it will engulf the White House, seat of injustice and tyranny," Mullah Mohammad Omar was quoted as saying by the Saudi pan-Arab daily Asharq Al-Awsat.

As to Bin Laden, whose al-Qaeda network is accused by the United States of carrying out the September 11 attacks, "Sheikh Osama is, thanks be to God, still alive, to the horror of Bush," Omar said.

Bush "is promising his people to kill Osama, unaware of the fact that it is God the Almighty Who gives life or takes it away," he said.

Asharq Al-Awsat said Omar, who has eluded U.S. forces since the fall of the Taliban's last bastion of Kandahar last year, was hiding in the mountains of Afghanistan and had answered its questions, submitted in writing, via his information adviser.

The paper said it ascertained that the interview, the first with Omar since the U.S.-led war on Afghanistan ended five years of Taliban rule, "was conducted in accordance with the professional standards it adheres to."

"We do not consider the battle to have ended in Afghanistan, or even in Palestine or other Muslim lands ... (The United States) launched a war against Islam and Muslims without any legitimate justification, and I am confident that God (will grant Muslims) victory," Omar was quoted as saying.

Asked if he stuck to his past view that Bin Laden was not behind last September's attacks in New York and Washington, Omar said: "The attacks that occurred in America are undoubtedly important events in history and played a major role in reshuffling the cards of international politics .

"There are reasons behind these great actions, and America, which knows these reasons full well, should strive to eliminate them, so that (such attacks) do not recur."

The Taliban leader vowed that the United States would encounter "hell and a resounding defeat" in Afghanistan, "as happened to the Soviet Union and British colonialism before that."