Marines scour Afghanistan for terrorist leaders

Associated Press

KABUL, Afghanistan – Armed with photographs of wanted terrorists, U.S. Marines scoured the roads of southern Afghanistan today for Taliban and al-Qaida leaders who might have slipped out of Kandahar as the former ruling militia abandoned its last stronghold.

Kandahar was reported to be tense, with the rival armed groups that replaced the Taliban jockeying for control of key parts of the city and occasionally exchanging gunfire. Talks were reportedly under way to set up a civil administration and avoid an explosion of factional fighting.

Tribal officials said more than 200 Arabs loyal to Osama bin Laden were still holding out at the Kandahar airport and refusing to surrender.

Afghanistan’s new interim leader called on the Afghan public to join the hunt for bin Laden and supreme Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, whose whereabouts were unknown. And Pakistan sent more troops and helicopters to its border with Afghanistan to prevent Taliban or al-Qaida fighters from entering that country.

“We will make sure we will get rid of terrorism. We want to finish terrorism in Afghanistan and in the world,” said Hamid Karzai, the leader of the U.N.-backed interim council that will run the country for six months.

Meanwhile, American warplanes bombed the remote mountains around the Tora Bora cave and tunnel complex where locals believe bin Laden, the prime suspect in the Sept. 11 attacks, could be hiding. However, the bombing was far less intense than in recent days.

Karzai, who takes office Dec. 22, said he was asking village elders to tell their people to help find bin Laden and Omar. He pledged to deliver the two leaders to international justice.

“We don’t know where Osama is. We are looking for him,” Karzai said. “I am asking villagers around Kandahar to look around the clock and stop him or any Arab they may see.”

The Marines were looking as well, patrolling key roads around Kandahar carrying photographs of “key terrorists,” spokesman Capt. Stewart Upton said at their base southwest of the city. Upton said they were generally leaving alone Taliban fighters who have blended back into the civilian population.

U.S. sailors and Marines in the Arabian Sea have searched about 200 vessels in the last two weeks for fleeing pro-Taliban fighters, said Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Dave Lapan.

Pakistan’s chief spokesman, Gen. Rashid Quereshi, said the country had sent extra troops and helicopters to border posts to cut off possible escape routes. He denied speculation that bin Laden and Omar could have slipped into Pakistan.

Also Saturday, Marines buried an Afghan anti-Taliban fighter with a 21-gun salute after he was killed by an errant American bomb.

The Afghan, who was not identified, was one of six anti-Taliban fighters killed on Wednesday when an Air Force B-52 dropped a one-ton satellite-guided bomb that also killed three Army Green Berets soldiers. Twenty Americans and 18 Afghans were wounded.

“This is not a man we knew, or a man we served with, but we are tied together by a common goal – freedom,” Marines intelligence officer Maj. Beau Higgins said in a eulogy.