Bearing down on remnants of the al-Qaida terrorist network inside Afghanistan, U.S. officials Monday reported leveling a former terrorist encampment that had seemed to spring back to life last week and disclosed the names of three more senior al-Qaida members whose death or capture has been confirmed.
Strikes by B-1 and B-52 bombers and carrier-based Navy jet fighters, which began late last week and continued Sunday, destroyed the Zhawar Kili Al-Badr camp in eastern Afghanistan and closed a long line of cliff-side cave entrances in the vicinity, the officials said. The area had been targeted after signs that al-Qaida members were trying to regroup there and had stocks of ammunition, tanks and armored personnel carriers.
Teams of U.S. Special Forces, Marines and forensic experts moved into the area over the weekend to comb through the rubble from the first bombing raids and pile up unexploded ammunition and heavy weapons found there, defense officials said. The ground troops then withdrew as U.S. warplanes bombed the stockpiles. A separate volley of bombs, delivered Sunday by Navy jets, blasted several antiaircraft artillery pieces in the nearby town of Khost, officials said.
"It's an ongoing operation," Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem, deputy director of operations for the Pentagon's Joint Staff, said of the strikes. "We're finding stuff, and we're attacking that stuff."
British support
On the diplomatic front Monday, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and nine U.S. senators swept into this former Soviet airbase north of Kabul and promised Afghan leaders their full support in rebuilding the shattered country.
Blair, in an unannounced midnight visit to the Bagram air base 30 miles from the capital, also praised the U.S.-led alliance for crushing the terrorist regime in Afghanistan.
The British leader said the international community turned its back on Afghanistan after the Soviets withdrew in 1989, and the country fell into the hands of the repressive Taliban regime.
The Afghan people "have suffered a very great deal in the past 20 years. But we do desire to be the partners of people here," Blair said. "The world is not going to walk away."
In an overlapping stop at the airbase, Sen. Joseph Lieberman also said the West would not turn it's back on the country.
"I think we learned at a very high and painful price the cost of a lack of involvement in Central Asia on Sept. 11 and we're not going to let it happen again," said the Connecticut Democrat and 2000 vice presidential candidate.
Blair and the senators, whose visit also was not announced beforehand, met with Prime Minister Hamid Karzai, who thanked "the U.S. Congress and the U.S. people for their support in the war against terrorism in Afghanistan," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Omar Samad.
The stop in Afghanistan came at the end of Blair's tour of the subcontinent, which was largely overshadowed by tensions between India and Pakistan. He was the first British leader to visit Afghanistan. Security was heavy as he visited British forces at Bagram. Britain is leading the international force deployed in Afghanistan to support Karzai's interim government.
In other developments
A six-nation group led by China and Russia took steps in Beijing to assert a leading role in the region, saying it wants Afghanistan free of foreign influence and welcomed the end of Taliban and al-Qaida control.
The U.N. human rights representative for Afghanistan said the "rule of the gun" must end because Afghans will feel truly free only after weapons are restricted, jobs created and daily routines re-established.
Pakistan said its troops arrested 23 foreign fighters trying to cross from Afghanistan into Pakistan over the weekend. At least 350 al-Qaida members, including more then 300 Arab, have been arrested in Pakistan after crossing the border.
In Kabul, the U.N. envoy to Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, toured mine-clearing efforts at the airport and discussed minimizing civilian casualties from bombings with the new U.S. special envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad. "We've talked about the civilian victims of the bombings," Brahimi said. "It is a concern of his as much as it is of mine. We have no disagreement on this."
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