U.S. Forces Bomb Suspected Taliban Compound
Sunday, March 21, 2004
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KABUL, Afghanistan — U.S. warplanes and ground forces killed five suspected Taliban (search) fighters at a compound in central Afghanistan, the U.S. military said Sunday.
The U.S. attack occurred Friday in Uruzgan (search) province, an isolated mountain area with a heavy presence of Taliban fighters.
"We were going into their stronghold, the heart of the Taliban, disrupting them," U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty said in Kabul, the capital.
A Taliban attack in the area Thursday killed two U.S. soldiers and one Afghan army soldier.
On Friday, U.S. and Afghan forces returned to the area and took fire from a Taliban compound. U.S. forces returned fire, and called in A-10 attack planes and B-1 bombers before sending in ground forces, Hilferty said.
No U.S. casualties were reported during the operation and one woman was wounded inside the compound, he said.
The U.S. forces found a ton of weapons, including rockets, mines and "bomb-making material," from the compound, Hilferty said.
American forces also searched houses in the area, and detained several people, he said.
Remote Uruzgan province, a Taliban heartland, is far from the Afghan-Pakistan border area, where Pakistan's military has been conducting its biggest-ever push against Al Qaeda (search) and Taliban suspects.
A U.S.-led coalition ousted the Taliban from power in Afghanistan in late 2001, but troops remain in the country to fight remnants of the hard-line Islamic movement.
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