Hard-line al Qaeda guerrillas were trying to regroup in eastern Afghanistan where US warplanes again bombed a battered training camp when tanks emerged from caves, the Pentagon said on Monday.
The aircraft attacked a cave complex at Zhawar Kili near the Tora Bora region on Thursday, on Friday and on Sunday and a senior US military official said the region remained among the most dangerous for US forces and their Afghan allies.
"They (al Qaeda) are attempting to try to regroup so that they can amass for leadership and mischief purposes," Navy Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem told a Pentagon briefing after bombing was again reported in the area on Monday.
He said the militant followers of fugitive leader Osama bin Laden, accused by Washington of masterminding the Sept. 11 attacks on America, were hiding in small numbers and trying to find each other.
"They have been dispersed. We have flushed them out of many areas and they have run for their lives literally and in some cases have been killed and also captured," Stufflebeem said.
He spoke as the US-led war in Afghanistan moved into its fourth month and Afghan and US forces pressed the hunt for the elusive bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar. The whereabouts of America's two most wanted men in the war against terrorism remained a mystery.
The US military launched the bombing campaign on Afghanistan on Oct. 7 and succeeded in toppling the Taliban rulers of the country blamed by Washington for harboring bin Laden.
The Paktia province in eastern Afghanistan was well known to have been "a hotbed of support" for the Taliban and al Qaeda, Stufflebeem said.
"It obviously is an area of interest still because al Qaeda had built a large training and supply complex in this area," he said. "This also is an area that we did not previously have a lot of anti-Taliban coordination or connection with, as we had initially in the north and as we have seen around Kandahar."
"So to say it's a more dangerous area than the others right now is probably accurate," Stufflebeem said.
(China Daily January 9, 2002)
