Washington

CIA targets Afghan warlord

The CIA fired a missile this week at an Afghan warlord accused of plotting attacks on his nation’s interim government and American troops, a U.S. official said Thursday.

The strike apparently marks the first time in the Afghanistan war that the United States has set out to kill an enemy not officially part of al-Qaida or the Taliban.

The missile, fired Monday from an unmanned Predator plane, missed Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the head of a militant Islamic party that opposes the presence of foreign troops in Afghanistan. But the strike near Kabul killed several of Hekmatyar’s associates, said the U.S. official, who was familiar with the attack. He requested anonymity because of the clandestine nature of the operation.

The strike seems to signal an expansion of the CIA’s mission in Afghanistan to include hunting enemies not directly linked to the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The CIA declined to comment on the strike.

Florida

Coast Guard calls off search for seven missing in crash

The Coast Guard suspended its search Thursday for the seven people who were aboard two Navy jets that crashed into the Gulf of Mexico during a training mission.

The twin-engine T-39 Sabreliners went down about 40 miles south of Pensacola on Wednesday.

Three people were on one plane, four on the other. Among the victims were two civilians and a Royal Saudi Air Force officer.

Harry White, a spokesman at Pensacola Naval Air Station where the planes were based, was unable to confirm whether the jets had collided.

“They suddenly disappeared from our radar,” White said. “There was no distress call.”

Washington

Investigators claim link between drug ring, terrorists

Federal investigators have uncovered significant evidence that proceeds from a nationwide narcotics trafficking ring have been funneled to terrorist organizations in the Middle East, the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration said Thursday.

DEA Administrator Asa Hutchinson said that investigators believe a portion of the millions of dollars collected by suppliers of a methamphetamine ring went to the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah.

Some money also has been traced to defendants’ families in Lebanon, Yemen and other Mideast countries, Hutchinson added, raising the possibility that illicit proceeds have been forwarded to other terrorist groups.