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From The Times
March 21, 2003

US troops hunt al-Qaeda fugitives in Afghanistan

From Zahid Hussain in Islamabad
HUNDREDS of US troops backed by combat helicopters and reconnaissance aircraft swept into southwestern Afghanistan yesterday in the biggest military operation in more than a year to flush al-Qaeda and Taleban fugitives from their mountain hideouts.

The predawn operation began with a big air assault as the troops combed villages southeast of Kandahar, a former Taleban stronghold.

About 1,000 soldiers from the US Army’s 82nd Airborne Division were involved in the hunt for Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda members as well as Taleban remnants who are believed to be regrouping in the region. The mountains close to the Pakistani border have been the centre of an intense battle between Taleban supporters and US troops for weeks.

On Wednesday suspected Taleban soldiers ambushed a government post in Spinboldak, killing three Afghan soldiers. Five attackers were arrested later.

Information gathered by American investigators from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the suspected mastermind of the September 11 terrorist attack, who was arrested in Pakistan this month, indicated that bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader, could be operating from the Pakistani-Afghan border area.

Yesterday’s military operation was focused on the Maruf district of Kandahar Province where Mullah Omar, the fugitive Taleban supreme leader, has strong tribal influence.

Colonel Roger King, a US Army spokesman at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan, said the troops started the operation after receiving “a mosaic of different Intelligence inputs” of activity in the area. Radio transmissions had been detected coming from caves above the villages.

Fighting in Afghanistan generally intensifies with the melting of the snows in spring.

A group loyal to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, an anti-US warlord and former Afghan Prime Minister, also threatened to start attacks if a war broke out in Iraq.

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