KANDAHAR (voa) – After a quiet Christmas, U.S. forces are expected to begin a new search for Osama bin Laden in the caves of eastern Afghanistan.
U.S. military officials announced the operation Monday. However, a U.S. spokesman, Kenton Keith, says Mr. bin Laden, the United States’ prime suspect for the terrorist attacks of September 11, could have been killed during recent U.S. bombing of the Tora Bora region.
Fighters of Mr. bin Laden’s al-Qaida network made their last stand in the region earlier this month, and the last sightings of Mr. bin Laden come from Tora Bora about two weeks ago.
U.S. Marines in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar spent Christmas on heightened alert. Pentagon officials said the heightened alert was a precautionary decision and not in response to any specific threat.
Some 2,000 U.S. Marines are in Afghanistan as part of the campaign to hunt down Osama bin Laden, al-Qaida members, and leaders of Afghanistan’s ousted Taleban militia.
Meanwhile, Russia has signed an agreement to help rebuild Afghanistan’s Salang Tunnel, a major route linking Central Asia to Pakistan.
The tunnel was a major supply route for the Soviet Army during its ten-year occupation of Afghanistan that ended in 1989. The tunnel has been blocked by debris for the past three years. The project will progress in two stages and is expected to be completed by the middle of 2002.
In Kabul Tuesday, more cabinet ministers of the new government took control of their offices and started preliminary work to rebuild their ministries and the nation.
Meanwhile, CNN television reports the convoy hit by U.S. planes Friday in eastern Afghanistan was carrying at least four al-Qaida leaders. The television quotes the minister of border affairs, Amanullah Zadran, as saying Stinger missiles and anti-aircraft weapons were fired from the convoy. U.S. warplanes fired back, and 50 to 60 people were killed.
Last week, a controversy arose over the identities of people in the convoy. The Pentagon said the convoy was carrying al Qaida or Taleban leaders, and that it was a valid target. But another member of Afghanistan’s interim government said the bombing killed delegates traveling to Kabul for the inauguration of the new government.
