WASHINGTON (REUTERS) — U.S. Marines moved Tuesday to cut off Taliban and al Qaeda escape routes from Kandahar, as anti-Taliban opposition forces pressed for surrender of the besieged southern Afghan city, top Pentagon officials said.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Air Force Gen. Richard Myers refused to rule out use of the 1,300 Marines to help capture the lone remaining Taliban stronghold, but said there were no plans for American troops to attack the city.
“The Marines and coalition forces operating from the forward operating base have begun interdicting lines of communication south of Kandahar,” Myers, chairman of the U.S. military Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Pentagon briefing.
“One of the things they are looking at are ways out of Kandahar to make sure al Qaeda and the Taliban don’t leave,” he said of hundreds of Marines who began setting up and reinforcing a desert air base south of Kandahar Nov, 25.
Meanwhile a U.S. soldier was shot in the shoulder and wounded during combat Tuesday and was in stable condition, said Navy Commander Ernest Duplessis, a spokesman for U.S.
Central Command, which is running the military campaign on Afghanistan.
A CIA officer last month became the first known American combat death in Afghanistan, killed during a prison uprising near Mazar-i-Sharif in northern Afghanistan.
As U.S. warplanes bombed the Taliban and hideouts of the al Qaeda network of fugitive Osama bin Laden for a 59th straight day, Rumsfeld accused the Taliban of using innocent
civilians in ancient Kandahar as “human shields.”
“In Kandahar, the hope remains that Taliban and al Qaeda forces will surrender,” he said, noting that opposition Pashtun forces had surrounded the city where Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar ordered his troops to fight to the death.
“But one thing is clear: The Taliban and al Qaeda will be driven from Kandahar. The choice really is theirs as to how it happens.”
No amnesty for Taliban, al Qaeda
Rumsfeld has warned, however, the United States opposes any surrender deal for Kandahar under which Omar and other Taliban or al Qaeda leaders would be given amnesty. The Taliban have long harbored bin Laden, who Washington accuses of masterminding the Sept. 11 hijack attacks on America.
Marines from U.S. warships in the northern Indian Ocean began landing at their remote desert airstrip about 55 miles (90 km) southwest of Kandahar nine days ago, and have since solidified that presence with attack helicopters and armor.
The deployment has grown as forces of southern Afghan Pashtun tribes opposed to the Taliban tighten their grip around Kandahar and continue to negotiate for possible surrender of the city.
Myers refused to give details about the new Marine operations.
“They are interdicting the lines of communication,” he said. “I don’t want to get into the tactics of it because I don’t want to tip off the enemy on exactly how they’re going to do their work,” he told reporters.
“They are prepared for engagement — they are a robust fighting force.”
Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said earlier the Marine force now totaled more than 1,300 and that the troops had begun deploying from their central base.
She declined to be specific.
“They are there for the obvious purpose of putting real pressure on the Taliban and the al Qaeda. They have started to move around and will contribute to the interdiction efforts” by other elite U.S. Special Operations troops who earlier set up checkpoints on roads in southern Afghanistan, Clarke said.
Myers and Clarke stressed that American warplanes were now concentrating their bombing efforts on mountain cave and tunnel complexes around Kandahar and Jalalabad, where the United States believes bin Laden and other senior al Qaeda officials might be hiding near the two cities.
