Posted on 03/20/2004 10:36:06 PM PST by HAL9000
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) --U.S. warplanes and ground forces killed five suspected Taliban fighters at a compound in central Afghanistan, the U.S. military said Sunday.The U.S. attack occurred Friday in Uruzgan province, an isolated mountain area with a heavy presence of Taliban fighters.
"We were going into their stronghold, the heart of the Taliban, disrupting them," U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty said in Kabul, the capital.
A Taliban attack in the area Thursday killed two U.S. soldiers and one Afghan army soldier.
On Friday, U.S. and Afghan forces returned to the area and took fire from a Taliban compound. U.S. forces returned fire, and called in A-10 attack planes and B-1 bombers before sending in ground forces, Hilferty said.
No U.S. casualties were reported during the operation and one woman was wounded inside the compound, he said.
The U.S. forces found a ton of weapons, including rockets, mines and "bomb-making material," from the compound, Hilferty said.
American forces also searched houses in the area, and detained several people, he said.
Remote Uruzgan province, a Taliban heartland, is far from the Afghan-Pakistan border area, where Pakistan's military has been conducting its biggest-ever push against al-Qaida and Taliban suspects.
A U.S.-led coalition ousted the Taliban from power in Afghanistan in late 2001, but troops remain in the country to fight remnants of the hard-line Islamic movement.
U.S. forces returned fire, and called in A-10 attack planes
The Taliban didn’t stand a chance.
The A-10 is the best ground support aircraft in the world. And Clintoon cancelled future purchases of this peerless wonder.
The survivability of that aircraft is amazing. Some of the pictures of these plans that brought home their pilot truly have amazed me.
Wings and tails almost completely gone, and they made it home.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I don’t believe the Warthog was ever sold off shore. (the better for us, I would never want our boys to be on the wrong end of a Warthog’s gun)
That's the general idea. None of this arrest or capture crap. A job well done.
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