British-Led Coalition Strike Leaves 2 Enemy Fighters Dead

Amid the incessant roar of C-130 troop transports and Apache helicopter gunships, nearly 1,000 soldiers of the anti-terrorism coalition deployed Friday to the mountains of eastern Afghanistan in a powerful show of force against Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters who had ambushed two Australian patrols.

The first confrontation with enemy forces in weeks left at least a couple of the suspected terrorists dead and others surrounded by British Royal Marines leading Operation Condor, a swiftly orchestrated mission to quell “a substantial enemy force” maneuvering at the 8,000-foot level of pine-covered mountains in Paktia province.

“They shot at us,” U.S. Army spokesman Maj. Bryan Hilferty said by way of explaining the decisive response that brought to an abrupt end a spate of low-key missions that did not encounter any Taliban or Al Qaeda operatives.

Most of the troops dispatched in dozens of predawn sorties were Royal Marines who had returned only three days earlier from the 16-day Operation Snipe, which sought out and destroyed weapons caches of Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters.

No combat casualties or face-to-face encounters with the enemy occurred in Operation Snipe, as was the case with a four-day Canadian-led sweep of the Tora Bora region this month and a three-day search by U.S. Special Forces of mountains overlooking Khowst airport, where American troops have been repeatedly fired at by unidentified forces.

The rapid response after the two Australian special services patrols, operating about four miles apart, were fired on Thursday by heavy machine guns demonstrated the need to maintain major battle readiness, Hilferty noted.

“You can’t send an entire infantry battalion into the field if you don’t have that on hand,” he said.

After the three recent missions failed to see much fighting, there had been hints--particularly from the British ranks of the U.S.-led coalition--that it might be time to wind down the fight against terrorism in this country that six months ago was ruled by Taliban allies of Osama bin Laden.

Coalition troops have orders to “close with the enemy and destroy them,” British Brig. Roger Lane told reporters, adding that the region to which his troops deployed is known to have been a Taliban stronghold.

Mission to Continue for Several Days

“I can confirm the coalition has made contact with the enemy; some have been killed,” said Lane, who commands the 1,700 British forces in the coalition. “The situation is fluid. I imagine the operation will continue for [several] days.”

He and others declined to say later whether further casualties were inflicted or suffered.

The large deployment from this wind-battered airfield 30 miles north of the capital, Kabul, was ordered after the Australian troops reported that they had been ambushed while patrolling an area that Lane said was north of Khowst but relatively distant from the Pakistani border.

Hilferty, who declined to be specific, citing reasons of mission security, said the firefight took place between 12 and 30 miles from the porous border, across which most surviving Taliban and Al Qaeda forces were thought to have fled in March after Operation Anaconda, a major battle in eastern Afghanistan.

U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Frank L. Hagenbeck, commander of the 17,000 coalition troops and special forces in Afghanistan, had warned a week ago that it was too early to talk of scaling back capabilities here because the Taliban and Al Qaeda forces, though on the run, remain a credible and well-organized threat.

“One of the things we try to do is be unpredictable,” Hilferty said of the overnight buildup. “We want to get inside the enemy’s decision cycles so they don’t know what to expect. Right now Afghanistan has no safe havens for terrorists, because if they try to get a little group together to have a convention, we’re going to be the uninvited guests.”

Royal Marines made up the bulk of the mission because they are based here and were therefore closer to the battleground than U.S. troops, most of whom are stationed near the city of Kandahar in the south. U.S. forces, however, flew troops to the region and provided air support with Apache helicopters, B-52 bombers, an array of fighter jets and AWACS surveillance planes, and A-10 Warthog tank-busting aircraft, Hilferty said.

Incessant air operations continued through the day despite howling winds that kicked up dust, obscuring visibility and complicating helicopter operations.

The latest mission in the 7-month-old military campaign against Al Qaeda and Taliban forces in Afghanistan came together with precision despite the spread of a mysterious illness that has now stricken 40 British soldiers, at least eight of whom were airlifted to hospitals in Europe. One soldier was so ill that the medical evacuation aircraft diverted to Ramstein Air Base in Germany rather than fly an additional 90 minutes to Britain.

22 More British Soldiers Reported With Illness

Eighteen British soldiers, all assigned to a field hospital detachment here, had been diagnosed with “meningitis-like” symptoms Wednesday and Thursday. On Friday, an order to examine all British forces turned up 22 more cases of soldiers suffering fever, vomiting, dehydration and diarrhea. One of the more recently afflicted was an anesthesiologist flown in from Britain to help treat the first wave of sufferers. He has been placed in isolation since returning to Britain and reporting similar symptoms.

Two experts in communicable diseases were being brought into Bagram to examine the remaining patients and 334 more under quarantine at Camp Gibraltar, the British sector of the base here. Cause of the intestinal disorder has yet to be determined, but Lt. Col. Ben Curry, a Royal Marines spokesman here, said enemy sabotage had all but been ruled out. None of those afflicted had taken part in recent missions, and food provided to the British troops came from outside Afghanistan.

About 4,500 coalition troops are stationed at Bagram, but so far the illness has afflicted only British soldiers.

“We are working very closely with the British to contain the infection and are of course keeping a close watch on our troops,” said Hilferty, the Army spokesman.