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| Afghanistan |
| Maybe four al-Qaeda banged in Pak border area |
| 2002-04-30 |
| 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. "Up to four" isn't a very big number. Wonder why it's so hard to arrive at? 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. Guess they are, huh? Somehow, we knew they were. The location of the latest fighting added weight to reports that many Taliban and al Qaeda followers of Osama bin Laden, chief suspect in the September 11 suicide attacks on the United States, had fled to Pakistan's lawless frontier tribal areas. Duh. 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. Nice to know we're out of the "thousands" category. And it'll probably be awhile before the Pak jihadis really feel like joining in, being as so many of them are still in jug. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |