AFGHANISTAN (wnbc) – Backed by U.S. special forces and intense bombing runs, some 2,000 anti-Taliban fighters were said to have headed out Tuesday for a cave complex thought to house al-Qaida members, and possibly even Osama bin Laden. That report from Jalalabad, in eastern Afghanistan, came as the Pentagon looked into claims that bin Laden’s right-hand man had been wounded in a U.S. airstrike Monday. In the south, meanwhile, other anti-Taliban fighters continued their battle for Kandahar.
IN JALALABAD, a spokesman for the local military chief said an elders council had given the go-ahead to hunt down foreign Taliban and al-Qaida fighters in the mountain area known as Tora Bora, about 30 miles to the south.
“They are on their way to the area, but fighting has not yet begun,” a spokesman for Hazrat Ali told Reuters by satellite telephone on Tuesday. “We expect it to start tomorrow morning.”
Other anti-Taliban officials said the United States had asked them to repair the Jalalabad runway — which the Americans bombed — so that fixed-wing aircraft could begin landing by Thursday.
Ali said on Monday that some 20 U.S. troops had already arrived via helicopter to help, and that he was preparing his men for battle. “That is our aim, to fight the terrorists in that area. It is the last and strongest al-Qaida base left in our country,” Ali said. “We are ready.”
At the Pentagon Tuesday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld would not comment on troop movements except to say that the United States has been “actively encouraging,” sometimes with rewards, Afghans to track down al-Qaida leaders.
The hunt apparently will not extend to Afghan Taliban fighters. In other areas where the Taliban government has fallen, Afghan Taliban fighters have been allowed to go home while foreign supporters have been taken prisoner.
Ali said he had tried to send a delegation to Tora Bora to get a surrender, but that two elders received word from bin Laden that while he didn’t want to fight Afghans he would take on any U.S. troops. “They gave a message to our elders from Osama bin Laden (which said) ‘I don’t want to fight the (Muslim forces), but if I find some foreign troops, I must fight them,’” Ali said.
U.S. officials speaking on condition of anonymity confirmed that U.S. special operations forces were in the area, and a Pentagon spokesman said intelligence sources had indicated that al-Qaida leaders were operating out of Tora Bora.
Tora Bora is a well-known cave complex built in the 1980s with U.S. funding as a headquarters for guerrillas fighting against the decade of Soviet occupation. Ali, who fought the Soviets from Tora Bora, described it as an impregnable fortress.
