U.S. Joins Forces With Afghans in Major Assault

At least one American and five Afghan government fighters were killed in a major new offensive launched Saturday against an Al Qaeda stronghold in the remote mountains of eastern Afghanistan, according to U.S. and Afghan officials.

Heavy U.S. bombing began just before daybreak in the province of Paktia and appeared to be continuing this morning as American jets attempted to flush soldiers in the Al Qaeda terrorist network from their mountain redoubt.

An Afghan commander in the region, Wazir Khan, said he believed that one American and five Afghans had been killed in the previous 24 hours. In addition, he said, at least four Americans and 23 Afghans had been injured by early this morning.

The bombing was so intense that Afghan government ground troops and the American Special Forces accompanying them could not yet enter the area.

“The area is very well fortified and is high in the mountains,” said Khan, who spoke by satellite phone from the front lines.

“It’s a more labyrinthine cave complex even than Tora Bora,” Khan said, referring to the area in eastern Afghanistan that the U.S. had bombed heavily in December. “I can’t say how long this operation will take.”

Khan said that Al Qaeda members were using antiaircraft guns to fire at the American aircraft.

Citing the ongoing combat, officials at the U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Fla., said Saturday that they were not at liberty to discuss details of the fighting or circumstances surrounding the casualties. The U.S. officials said in a prepared statement that “initial reports are that one U.S. service member and two Afghan forces have been killed. An unspecified number of U.S. and Afghan forces have been injured.”

Saturday marked the first major U.S. bombing in Afghanistan since a January attack on the Al Qaeda cave complex at Zhawar Kili, which is also in Paktia but much closer to the Pakistani border. Pakistan was reported to have sealed its border with Paktia province Saturday to prevent escape by Al Qaeda members.

For the first time Saturday, U.S. forces used a recently developed weapon, the 2,000-pound BLU-118B, a thermobaric bomb, said Navy Cmdr. Dave Culler, a spokesman for the Central Command.

A Navy fighter plane dropped the bomb, which can penetrate caves without causing much external damage, on a cave complex in the region. Because the bomb creates a blast of high pressure inside a cave, it is believed to be a particularly effective weapon in places where chemical or biological agents might be stored. A thermobaric bomb is designed to incinerate such agents rather than disperse them into the atmosphere, Culler said.

Culler declined to comment on whether U.S. military forces believed that chemical or biological weapons were stored in the cave complex. B-52 bombers also were being used in the attack.

The area under siege is a rugged, mountainous and desolate region about a six-hour drive south of Kabul, the Afghan capital. The besieged territory lies between the cities of Gardez in central Paktia and Khowst to the southeast.

The area was known to be heavily populated by Arabs, who make up most of Al Qaeda, before the fall of Kabul to Northern Alliance troops in mid-November. After that, many more Arabs came through the region as they fled south.

It has long been suspected that a number of these Al Qaeda members, as well as some Taliban, stayed in the southeastern border provinces, creating pockets of resistance to both the American military campaign and the new Afghan interim government. The environment has been relatively sympathetic, because the Arabs and Taliban had ties to the local population and were familiar with the difficult mountainous terrain.

In their prepared statement Saturday, U.S. military officials said that about 6:30 a.m. in Afghanistan, “Afghan and coalition forces began fighting Al Qaeda terrorists and non-Afghan Taliban south of Gardez.”

Speaking from Tampa, Navy Cmdr. Culler said officials would not discuss details of the fighting because of concern that such disclosures could further jeopardize American and Afghan forces.

“We’re not giving any insight whatsoever to the hardware [or] resources that are being used, because they [Al Qaeda and Taliban] use that as good intel,” Culler said.

U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. John W. Rosa Jr. told reporters Friday that “hundreds” of Al Qaeda and Taliban had been located in or around Paktia province. Rosa also said that eliminating the pockets of Al Qaeda and Taliban trying to regroup remained a primary mission of the United States.

The neighboring province of Paktika, which also is suspected of being an Al Qaeda hide-out, shares a border with Pakistan as well, and it is easy for people to slip back and forth across the border using smuggling routes usually traveled by horses and camels.

The border area is also the home of Jalaladin Haqqani, the Taliban commander who had close ties to Al Qaeda and is a near-legendary figure in the region because of his victory over the Soviets when they attempted to control it. The U.S. has been trying to apprehend Haqqani since early in the war, but he and his followers are thought to have escaped to Pakistan and perhaps to be inciting opposition to the American military operation and the interim government, according to Afghan sources.

“They have been going directly to the mosques and saying to people, ‘Let’s wage jihad against Americans.’ They are saying that Bacha Khan is not a Muslim now because he is helping Americans so ‘Let’s jihad against Bacha Khan too,’ ” said Wazir Khan, referring to his brother, who is the leader in the Khowst region and an ally of the Americans in the area.

Wazir Khan said that 600 of his soldiers along with 50 American Special Forces troops began Saturday’s operation about 3 a.m. when they advanced on the Al Qaeda stronghold in the district of Shahi Kot as part of a carefully coordinated plan in which the Al Qaeda forces were being attacked from two directions. A second force was moving into Shahi Kot from the city of Gardez in central Paktia province, he said.

After closing the roads that lead to the Shahi Kot vicinity, according to Wazir Khan, Afghans and Americans began their advance but kept clear of the target area while jets bombed.

“We have surrounded the area and are ready to advance as soon as we get the command,” Khan said.

Residents in Gardez reported hearing an unusual number of planes flying overhead, although they were too far away to hear any bombing.

U.S. Special Forces recently began training at least one and possibly two 500-member contingents of Afghans to press a new hunt for Taliban and Al Qaeda in Paktia’s villages and mountainsides, said several Afghan commanders in the region.

Special Forces troops have entrenched themselves in the area over the last two months, setting up bases in Gardez and Khowst. In order to limit the U.S. exposure to danger on the ground, they have recruited hundreds of Afghan soldiers to work with them to hunt Al Qaeda. In recent weeks, however, the effort has been hampered by fighting between rival warlords attempting to control the territory.

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Times staff writers Esther Schrader and David Willman in Washington contributed to this report.

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Beginning in stories published in 2006, the Afghan warlord Bacha Khan is identified as Pacha Khan Zadran. (Second reference is “Pacha Khan.”)

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