Afghanistan: US forces attack suspected al Qaeda hideout
For the past two days, U.S. and NATO forces have been conducting a major attack against a compound in a remote area of Eastern Afghanistan where Osama bin Laden or another senior al Qaeda leader may be hiding, ABC News has learned.
According to eyewitnesses and local reporters in Kunar province, Coalition forces launched a fierce attack on a small enclave in the village of Mandaghel, approximately 17 miles from the border with Pakistan, on Friday afternoon. Warplanes pounded the positions ; U.S. special forces and Afghan National Army soldiers moved in shortly afterwards.
The assault appeared to meet stiff resistance from militants at the compound. Heavy artillery and gunfire could be heard for hours, local witnesses said . A handful of civilians were reportedly wounded in the strike. Though sealed off from outside access, the area now appears to be under coalition control.
U.S. officials declined to identify who the operation was targeting, but indicated they were after a "High Value Target". ...
Have those two big Taliban birds already sung? The arrest of Mullah Akhund, the group’s number three, wasn’t announced until Thursday afternoon, but according to another Blotter article he was taken into custody “only hours” after Cheney left Pakistan for Afghanistan on Monday. So conceivably, they’ve been working him over for days. Which leads to two questions: (1) why would his arrest have been announced publicly before the U.S. had a chance to act the intelligence he’s (presumably) giving them, and (2) wouldn’t all senior AQ leaders have gone to ground immediately after word of the arrest got out, knowing that the U.S. could soon have a bead on them?
Update: This is either a major scoop or a complete bust because there’s nothing about it anywhere else on Google News that I can see. NBC has, however, confirmed with the Taliban that the two commanders have been arrested. And contrary to prior reports, they weren’t arrested together; one was arrested “more than a week ago” (with an accomplice) and gave up the other.
Pakistani security forces raided at the Gul Park Hotel in Quetta, the capital of Balouchistan province, and arrested Ameer Khan Haqani, commander of Zabul province in Afghanistan, and Jaland Abdullah Sarhadi of Kandahar.
Sarhadi had been detained for more than three years in Guantanamo Bay after the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001. He was later released by U.S. authorities.
It is widely believed among the Taliban rank and file that it was the information extracted from these two men that led to the capture of Mullah Obaidullah [Akhund], the former Taliban defense minister and close confidante of Taliban leader Mullah Omar on Monday…
A Pakistani intelligence official in Quetta, speaking off the record to NBC News, said that Mullah Obaidullah has been taken to the capital, Islamabad where a team of U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials will assist in the interrogation process.
