BIG 'ole Kentucky BUMP for the GOOD GUYS!! Never forget!!
Posted on 04/30/2002 6:34:09 PM PDT by swarthyguy
BAGRAM AIR BASE (Reuters) - Australian special forces, backed by U.S. troops, killed up to four al Qaeda rebels on the Afghan-Pakistan border at last bringing into the open a shift of fighting to the sensitive frontier region, military spokesman said Tuesday.
In two clashes over a 20-hour period Monday and Tuesday the troops also uncovered major weapons caches in caves and camouflaged mud huts on the ill-defined border where for days there have been conflicting accounts of whether U.S. and other troops were operating on the Pakistan side.
The location of the latest fighting added weight to reports that many Taliban and al Qaeda followers of Osama bin Laden (news - web sites), chief suspect in the September 11 suicide attacks on the United States, had fled to Pakistan's lawless frontier tribal areas.
It also suggested U.S.-led forces were now concentrating their search for rebels in the border area where caves often start in Afghanistan (news - web sites) and end in Pakistan.
The commander of coalition ground forces in Afghanistan, General Franklin "Buster" Hagenbeck, said intelligence showed al Qaeda had dispersed but remained a cohesive force of potentially hundreds -- but "not thousands" -- capable of suicide bombings, truck bombings and rocket attacks.
"I think there's still some mid-level al Qaeda leadership out there. I think that they still do have a command and control structure in place. From all the reports that I get from a variety of intelligence sources it tells me that they can still communicate," Hagenbeck said.
"It remains an open question whether they have the capability to bring together larger formations. We're on the lookout for that," the two star general told reporters at Bagram Air Base, the coalition's headquarters 30 miles north of Kabul.
U.S. military spokesman Major Bryan Hilferty said the first exchange of fire in which two rebels were either killed or wounded took place Monday morning as a non-U.S. special forces reconnaissance team tracked a larger group of militants.
At dawn Tuesday, after 200 troops from the U.S. 101st Airborne Division were flown by helicopter to set up a cordon, the special forces group, identified in Canberra as Australians, ambushed an al Qaeda group killing two fighters.
The rebel group had been under surveillance for several days, Hilferty told reporters at Bagram.
In Canberra, Australian Defense Force spokesman Brigadier Mike Hannan said a small patrol of the Australian Special Air Service Regiment (SASR) was involved in the fighting, first encountering four rebels who opened fire.
"Our soldiers returned fire, killing or wounding two of the terrorists," he told reporters.
"At that time it was decided to exploit the area for intelligence purposes and additional Australian special forces plus troops from the United States 101st Airborne Division reacted and were inserted into the area," Brigadier Hannan said.
"This was a successful operation demonstrating good coalition response in a contact with al-Qaeda terrorists."
U.S. spokesman Hilferty praised the Australians conduct.
"We had a special forces reconnaissance team, they were compromised, I mean people found them, and those people foolishly fired and the special forces fired back much more accurately, shooting and possibly killing two of them." Hilferty said.
RAPID REACTION FORCE
A couple of hours after the first contact, the rapid reaction force flown to the area, found a complex of buildings and caves containing mortar bombs, grenades and machine gun ammunition.
Blood was found but the bodies of the wounded or dead had been dragged away from the site northeast of the town of Ghost, around one to two km from the Pakistani border.
Hagenbeck said in the second engagement before dawn on Tuesday at about 4:30 a.m. two rebels were killed in the same area when they ran into an ambush.
"We knew how they would react once the sun went down last night so we were ready for that and we killed two," Hagenbeck said.
Hilferty did not know the size of the group that had been under observation and acknowledged that some may have escaped.
"We're not perfect. We would love to be but we're not," Hilferty said. "It's impossible to seal a country the size of Texas and to survey every single person. We can't even make sure we have every criminal in Boston."
The run-in with the small number of enemy reinforced the perception that al Qaeda fighters have learned to hide from superior U.S. firepower since they were routed in March during the Battle of Shah-i-Kot, the biggest ground fighting of the war.
"I think that they most certainly have dispersed, they've gone to a variety of locations," said Hagenbeck.
"They are an adaptable enemy and I think they have learned not to mass their forces as a result of Shah-i-Kot but I can assure you we've got eyes on them wherever they are. What we're in the process of doing is to deny Afghanistan as a sanctuary."
< /sarcasm>
No problem, they are usually in state or federal office.
BIG 'ole Kentucky BUMP for the GOOD GUYS!! Never forget!!
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