- BAGRAM AIR BASE,
Afghanistan (Reuters) - The U.S. military said Sunday they had found no
evidence to support rumors a network of reinforced caves found in eastern
Afghanistan had been used as a refuge for Osama bin Laden or other al Qaeda
leaders.
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- U.S. soldiers returning from a six-day mission Saturday
said they saw rooms with steel ceilings and concrete floors, including
a possible jail, in some of the 15 caves they searched. They also blew
up ammunition and found documents.
-
- Some said they were told by villagers that bin Laden
and his men retreated to the rugged terrain around Zawar Khili, about 21
miles southwest of the city of Khost, after the heavy U.S. bombing and
ground offensive of "Operation Anaconda" in early March.
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- Maj. Bryan Hilferty, a U.S. military spokesman, said
he did not know whether the caves had been enhanced by mujahideen warriors
fighting Soviet troops in the 1980s or more recently by bin Laden's al
Qaeda network.
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- "It confirms that the Zawar Khili Valley was at
one time certainly an important place," he told reporters at Bagram
Air Base, just north of Kabul. "I don't know of any evidence that
there were senior leaders there."
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- Documents found in the caves would be studied by intelligence
analysts, but their contents would not be made public, Hilferty said.
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- Captain Lou Bauer of the 101st Airborne Division described
two of the caves as "quite elaborate."
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- "There were several rooms," he told reporters
Saturday. "One appeared to be a jail."
-
- One U.S. private told Reuters he saw "big, long
caves that intersect for about one to two miles."
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- The border area around Zawar Khili has been bombed by
U.S. planes and searched by special forces for al Qaeda and Taliban fighters
fleeing last month's battles in the nearby Shahi Kot Valley, the biggest
U.S. ground offensive in the Afghan war.
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- The craggy ridges and foothills of eastern Paktia and
Khost provinces continue to be a prime area for U.S.-led operations as
intelligence officers warn that the rebels are laying low and planning
a new series of guerrilla-style assaults.
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- Other mop-up operations in the area have turned up weapons
caches and documents, but few enemy fighters.
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- Some Afghan commanders have questioned U.S. estimates
of thousands of rebels killed and say many disappeared into the local population
or escaped across the mountains into Pakistan.
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- But the United States said its efforts to track down
al Qaeda and the Taliban were concentrated within Afghanistan.
-
- "The Pakistanis have been a very good partner with
us," Hilferty said. "Our focus right now is on Afghanistan and
there are hundreds of people all throughout Afghanistan that we're still
trying to find."
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- Washington blames al Qaeda for the September 11 attacks
on the United States. The Taliban, which ruled most of Afghanistan for
five years under a strict interpretation of Islam, are also a target for
harboring Saudi-born bin Laden and his forces.
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