KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (REUTERS) — Afghan troops and their U.S. advisers stormed a hospital in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar Monday, killing six Arab gunmen of Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda network in an assault lasting over nine hours.
It all started before dawn with a rattle of automatic fire and two detonations.
“Go, Go!” an American voice was heard shouting as Afghans cleared a wing of the hospital room by room, throwing grenades followed by rapid single rounds and bursts of automatic fire.
The al Qaeda fighters, besieged in a single first-floor ward for the past month, ignored at least two ultimatums, refused offers to negotiate, and fought back hard.
“They were fighting to the last moment of their lives,” said provincial government spokesman Khalid Pashtoon, announcing the end of the operation and the death of all six Arabs at 2 p.m.
A doctor working in the emergency section said he saw bodies that were partially burned, presumably by grenades used to clear the wing where the gunmen had barricaded themselves in with cupboards and beds.
“Their legs, hands, abdomen were burned on one side,” Mohammed Musa said. “Two bodies were in the corridor, two under a table in their ward and two in another room.”
When Taliban rule collapsed last month to Afghan opposition fighters backed by U.S. air strikes, 19 al Qaeda fighters were patients in the city hospital. Some were detained, some escaped, but seven managed to barricade themselves into a single ward.
They rejected all efforts by Afghanistan’s new interim government to persuade them to surrender.
One al Qaeda member tried to escape from the hospital earlier this month, using a turban to lower himself out of a window. When he thought he was about to be recaptured, he killed himself with a grenade.
The standoff lasted weeks, with the remaining six huddled out of sight behind windows covered with cardboard and blankets.
Washington has vowed to annihilate the international al Qaeda network and to capture or kill its leader, whom it accuses of masterminding the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington. Bin Laden’s whereabouts are not known.
Trained for a week
Pashtoon told reporters the decision to mount the operation was taken because of the disruption the siege was causing to the hospital, its staff and patients.
He insisted the assault was conducted by Afghans, but conceded that U.S. Special Forces were present in an advisory role. The spokesman said the gunmen fought back with Kalashnikov rifles, grenades and pistols.
Maj. Chris Miller of the 5th Special Forces Group based at Fort Campbell, Ky., said the Afghan assault troops had been training for about a week for an operation he described as complicated and difficult.
After the initial pre-dawn assault, there was a lull.
Then, about an hour before the expiry of another ultimatum at 2 p.m., there were several loud detonations, followed by single shots fired in pairs — what the military calls “double-tapping,” firing two rounds into each target as it appears.
The besieged gunmen replied with bursts of automatic fire.
There was another brief respite, and more detonations. Gray smoke oozed from the windows where the foreign gunmen were holed up. Flashes could be seen inside, along with people moving, suggesting that the wing was being steadily cleared.
An American could clearly be heard shouting orders — what Maj. Miller described as an “advise and assist role.”
U.S. marksmen outside took cover, their weapons trained on the gunmen’s ward.
At one point police said two gunmen were dead, three wounded, and one missing and believed to have concealed himself. A few minutes later, after further explosions and firing, they said all six had been killed.
Pashtoon said five members of the Afghan security forces were injured, one seriously.
Dr. Musa said some warning had been given to staff patients around midnight. “We were told it would be dangerous and we should move people,” he said. They were not told why.
