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U.S. forces kill 4 in Afghanistan
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-11-22 09:41

U.S.-led troops mounted overnight raids on suspected al-Qaida compounds in eastern Afghanistan, killing four people and detaining several others, officials said Sunday.

The U.S. military said "several Arab fighters" were among the suspects killed or detained in the operation in Nangarhar province, although a local official said only Afghans survived.

News of the operation came as the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan told The Associated Press that al-Qaida suspects continued to slip across the nearby Pakistani border.

Lt. Gen. David Barno, the commander of the 18,000 mainly U.S. troops in Afghanistan, speaks Sunday, Nov. 21, 2004, in Paktika province, about 200 kilometers (120 miles) southwest of Kabul. Barno said that rebels including al-Qaida fighters were still slipping into the region from Pakistan. [AP]

The overnight attack targeted several compounds that "had clear connections to al-Qaida," the military said in a statement.

It said the operation was launched partly on the basis of a tip from local residents and also netted a haul of weapons, explosives and cash.

Faizan ul-Haq, a spokesman for the provincial governor, said Afghan and U.S. soldiers took part in the raid in Bati Kot district of Nangarhar.

He said the four people who died were burned beyond recognition, making it impossible to check their nationality. He added that five people were detained.

"We are not sure if they burned themselves before the operation started or if the Americans somehow burned them," ul-Haq said.

Nangarhar lies in a swath of Afghan territory where U.S. and allied Afghan forces continue to battle Taliban-led rebels three years after the fall of the hardline militia.

Lt. Gen. David Barno, the commander of the 18,000 mainly U.S. troops in Afghanistan, said rebels including al-Qaida fighters were still slipping in from Pakistan.

"There's continued infiltration back and forth on both sides of the border," he said in an interview after inaugurating a new U.S. base supposed to foster reconstruction in the troubled border area.

American and Pakistani forces on either side of the frontier "work very closely ... to reduce that infiltration and strike back at the terrorists when they do come back and forth," he said.

The mountainous border zone is also a suspected hiding place for al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahri.

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