US, Canadian Troops Battle al-Qaida
By PAUL HAVEN
.c The Associated Press
BAGRAM, Afghanistan (AP) - Mopping up after the biggest U.S.-led offensive of the Afghan war, U.S. and Canadian troops killed three enemy fighters Thursday in a 90-minute gunbattle while clearing caves and bunkers in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan.
The Canadian Press news agency, which has a reporter with Canadian troops, said coalition troops subdued suspected al-Qaida or Taliban fighters with anti-tank weapons, grenades, heavy machine guns and small arms fire.
There were no U.S. or Canadian casualties, the agency said. The coalition casualty toll stood at eight U.S. special forces troops and three Afghan allied fighters. All died in the first two days of the operation.
On Thursday, U.S., Canadian and Afghan troops combed the area around the Shah-e-Kot valley for intelligence information and any stray enemy fighters left behind after al-Qaida and its Afghan Taliban allies fled the area following Operation Anaconda's 12 days of airstrikes and ground fighting.
Maj. Gen. Frank L. Hagenbeck, commander of coalition troops in Afghanistan, told reporters he had ordered DNA tests on remains of al-Qaida fighters to determine whether any senior figures in the terrorist network were among the dead.
Neither Osama bin Laden nor Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar was believed to be in the area on March 2 when U.S. forces and their Afghan allies launched the offensive.
Hagenbeck said some of the 20 prisoners captured in the operation indicated that ``second and third tier'' al-Qaida leaders had been killed and he ordered the tests to make sure that no senior figures were there too.
``Even if it's a long shot that maybe one of these al-Qaida leaders (was there), we want to go through every means we've got available to us to try to positively identify them,'' Hagenbeck said.
He has said coalition forces searching the caves had already found bomb-making devices, extensive weapons caches, manuals on how to attack individuals in cars and blow up bridges.
He also said the cave searches have turned up large weapons caches, some of which will be turned over to the Afghan army.
Hagenbeck also acknowledged that some civilians were killed in the fighting, though he did not say how many. He blamed the deaths on the al-Qaida fighters, who set up mortar positions between the houses in the hamlets of the Shah-e-Kot Valley.
``It's always tragic when noncombatants are killed in something like this,'' Hagenbeck said.