U.S. Kills 5, Captures 32 In Raid Near Kandahar

Camp a Suspected Hideout for Al Qaeda, Taliban

U.S. soldiers raided a suspected al Qaeda or Taliban compound north of the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, killing five fighters and capturing 32 in the first known combat by U.S. forces in Afghanistan in more than a month, defense officials said yesterday.

No casualties were suffered by the Special Operations troops that carried out Sunday night's attack, said Air Force Lt. Col. Chip Compton, a spokesman for the Central Command, the U.S. military headquarters for the war.

The raid took place in the village of Deh Rawod, located on the Helmand River about 70 miles north of Kandahar, a region that remains a stronghold of the Taliban militia that was driven from power in Afghanistan last year. Mohammad Omar, the Taliban leader, grew up in the village and in the nearby town of Tarin Kot, and there has been speculation that he has returned to the region.

The U.S. troops were shot at as they entered the area, said Marine Capt. Steven 0'Connor, a military spokesman at Bagram air base in Afghanistan.

"Five of those individuals in the compound fired on the U.S. personnel, so we returned fire and killed the five and took 32 detainees," O'Connor told reporters. The captives were flown to the U.S. base at Bagram, 35 miles north of Kabul, the Afghan capital, where they will be interrogated and identified, he said.

The battle was the first known military action involving U.S. troops in Afghanistan since U.S. and allied forces carried out a major offensive against al Qaeda fighters in eastern Afghanistan in early March. Eight U.S. troops died in the offensive, and the U.S. military says hundreds of al Qaeda fighters also were killed.

About 130 soldiers from the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division returned yesterday from a mission near the eastern town of Khost, where they had been searching for the perpetrators of rocket attacks on a nearby U.S. Special Forces base. But they caught no one. After they arrived, two more rockets were fired from a different location.

Also, British Marines who had been searching for al Qaeda fighters and weapons in the area to the southwest of Khost said their two-week operation was completed. Brig. Roger Lane, the British commander, said even though no al Qaeda fighters were found during the operation, it still delivered a "significant blow" to the enemy by destroying "a vast arsenal of weaponry."

"It is true to say that we did not encounter the enemy during this operation," he told reporters at Bagram. But he said that "from a strategic perspective, this is an encouraging sign."

Some Pentagon officials are placing a different, more pessimistic interpretation on the apparent absence of al Qaeda fighters in eastern Afghanistan. These officials say intelligence reports indicate that members of the terrorist network are regrouping just over the border in semiautonomous regions of western Pakistan.

For the past two weeks, the United States has been urging Pakistan to mount attacks against those concentrations of al Qaeda fighters, but the Pakistani government has resisted, according to U.S. and Pakistani officials.

Pakistani military officials say their forces are strained by Pakistan's four-month-old standoff with India. They fear that military action against al Qaeda in Pakistan could be so unpopular as to be politically destabilizing. They also say they are skeptical of U.S. reports that there are large groups of al Qaeda fighters in Pakistan.

Asked about the state of Pakistani cooperation, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told reporters he was "very pleased" with it, but he also noted that Pakistan's semiautonomous "tribal areas" enjoy special privileges. The Pakistani government, he said, is "currently working out ways that they can deal with the tribal organizations so that, in fact, the al Qaeda or Taliban can be routed out."