Washington — Marines who searched an abandoned Taliban compound in southern Afghanistan found documents and other intelligence that could help in the hunt for Taliban and al-Qaida leaders, U.S. defense officials said Wednesday.
The mission by about 200 Marines began early Monday and lasted 29 hours, the Pentagon said.
The search was in support of U.S. efforts to eradicate the al-Qaida and locate Taliban leaders who went into hiding after the fall of Kandahar, their final stronghold. But it was not specifically an effort to capture Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban leader, or Osama bin Laden, officials said.
"To say that we have U.S. forces that are specifically ... going to look for these two individuals wouldn't be correct," Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem told a Pentagon news conference. Instead, he said, American forces are seeking evidence that may eventually lead to the capture of Omar and bin Laden. "We're casting a relatively wide net to build intelligence," said Stufflebeem, deputy director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Other U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said weapons were found at the compound, in addition to documents. They said the intelligence value of the materials appeared to be modest.
Small groups of surviving al-Qaida members appear to be trying to regroup, Stufflebeem said.
In other developments, Victoria Clarke, chief spokeswoman for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, said about 200 members of the Army's 101st Airborne Division arrived at Kandahar airport as the vanguard of a larger force that will replace the approximately 1,000 Marines who have been securing the airport and building a detention facility.
Also, the Pentagon said the crash of a Global Hawk unmanned spy plane Sunday was being investigated as an accident. The aircraft crashed on land in a country near Afghanistan, but Stufflebeem declined to identify the country.
The crash apparently was caused by a maintenance-related malfunction, Stufflebeem said. "Clearly, it was not shot down," he said.
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