GARDEZ/BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan (REUTERS) — U.S. planes bombed Taliban and al Qaeda cave hideouts in eastern Afghanistan Tuesday, as hundreds of Afghan troops and a number of tanks gathered at the battle’s front line, waiting for the order to advance on remaining rebels.
After more than a week of fighting in the biggest U.S.-led battle of the five-month Afghan war, the reinforcements gathered near Shahi Kot, about 95 miles south of Kabul in Paktia province, close to the Pakistani border.
While the focus remained on the Shahi Kot fighting, a senior Afghan military official said Taliban-al Qaeda rebels had also regrouped in four eastern provinces, including Wardak, Khost, Ghazni and other locations in Paktia province.
Reuters correspondent Christine Hauser, in Gardez, around 20 miles from the fighting, reported hearing overnight bombing.
At Bagram air base on the outskirts of Kabul, control point for the battle, a U.S. military spokesman said there were about, 1,000 Afghan troops at the front line.
He said although about 600 U.S. troops had been withdrawn, another 1,000 remained in the combat area.
In Washington, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said despite the limited pull-out, the U.S. military remained in charge of Operation Anaconda, aimed at mopping up al Qaeda guerrillas in a rugged Afghan mountain battlefield stretching over 60 square miles.
“The U.S. will stay very much in charge,” Rumsfeld said. He said the military hoped the battle, which also involved a number of allied nations, would end sometime this week.
“There has been no sustained or accurate fire from the rebels in the last four or five days,” Major Bryan Hilferty told reporters at Bagram.
The senior Afghan official who warned of other rebel pockets said thousands of government troops were already on the way to the areas to head off trouble.
“We have intelligence that remnants of the Taliban and al Qaeda are armed and still active in these (four) regions,” the official, who is a top aide of Defense Minister General Mohammad Fahim but who declined to be identified, told Reuters.
“We know they are still alive and can cause trouble,” he said. “Up to 5,000 troops will be deployed and stationed in these areas.”
About 700 of the troops have already taken up position, the official said without disclosing their location.
“Our forces will not attack them right away. We will first warn them through our contacts like the town elders,” he said.
“If they refuse to stop stirring trouble and don’t distance themselves from foreign agents and terrorism, we will move on them,” he told Reuters.
