BC-AFGHANISTAN:TB

KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghan officials said Monday that Arab fighters were involved in the weekend ambush in which five American soldiers were wounded, marking the first significant confrontation between the U.S. military and suspected al-Qaida forces since Operation Anaconda in March.

The four-hour firefight that erupted Saturday when a joint U.S.-Afghan patrol came under fire near the eastern Afghanistan town of Khost offers the first evidence in months that al-Qaida elements may still be present on the Afghan side of the border with Pakistan, the officials said.

Details of the ambush emerged as Afghanistan's state television announced the arrest Monday of a foreign man driving a car packed with explosives. He was caught in Kabul after bumping into another car. Despite repeated warnings that terrorists might target the U.S.-backed administration of President Hamid Karzai, this was the first indication that any such attack had been planned.

According to Afghan intelligence officials, the foiled attack and the ambush on U.S. forces mark the beginning of an effort by al-Qaida forces to revive their operational capability against the U.S. military and the U.S.-backed Afghan government.

After being thrown into disarray by Operation Anaconda against their positions in the Shah-e Kot valley in March, remaining al-Qaida forces and their Taliban allies are planning a campaign of guerrilla activities against U.S. forces in eastern Afghanistan, said one Afghan intelligence official.

At Bagram air base, the headquarters of American forces in Afghanistan, military spokesman Col. Roger King confirmed U.S. forces believed Arabs were present at the compound where the ambush took place.

A force of around 40 U.S. soldiers accompanied by about 10 allied Afghan fighters had gone to the compound on the basis of intelligence that Arabs were there, he said. Two Afghan fighters who led the approach were killed when those inside the compound opened fire from a machine-gun position.

Five U.S. soldiers were injured during the subsequent battle, which ended only after the U.S. force called in air support to destroy the mud-walled compound, one that was typical of the fortified homes inhabited by Pashtun tribesmen in the area.

The village of Ayub Khail where the ambush took place lies between the volatile city of Khost, which is riven by tribal rivalries, and the border with Pakistan's lawless tribal regions. It is known as a stronghold of a former Taliban leader Jalaluddin Haqqani, who has strong ties also to the tribes living just across the border in Pakistan.

The clash was the biggest battle involving U.S. forces since Operation Anaconda in March, King said. It was also the first in which enemy fighters have made a deliberate effort to engage U.S. forces.

King said it wasn't clear whether U.S. forces had surprised the enemy combatants or whether they had been lured into a well-laid trap. But the governor of Paktia province, Ras Mohammed Dalili, who is collaborating with U.S. forces in the hunt for al-Qaida, said Arab al-Qaida fighters had planned the ambush.

"We don't know their identities or where they come from, but they are Arabs," he said. "It was an ambush and they had planned it."

Three of the assailants were killed in the clash, and U.S. forces are holding one seriously wounded captive. His nationality has not been established, King said.

Around 100 U.S. Special Forces have been based since March at an airfield outside town of Khost, from which they have conducted repeated raids in search of the fugitive al-Qaida fighters.

But although they have unearthed numerous caches of weapons at suspected al-Qaida hideouts, they have failed to uncover evidence of al-Qaida forces reported to have taken refuge in the area after they were driven out of the Shahikot Valley by U.S. forces during Operation Anaconda in March.

The airfield at which the U.S. force is based has repeatedly come under rocket attack, but although the airfield covers a huge area, all of the rockets have missed their target, leading some U.S. sources to conclude that their assailants are reluctant to engage them directly. In many instances, U.S. forces have been deliberately misled by local tribal leaders into targeting villages or homes inhabited by tribal rivals, adding another layer of complication to the hunt for the remnants of the al-Qaida force.

Saturday's operation proved that U.S. officials do receive good intelligence, however, King said. "The intelligence gathering methods work," he said. Sometimes they enable U.S. forces to deny use of weaponry and hideouts to al-Qaida, and sometimes, as in this instance, "they are effective because we make contact with the enemy," he said.

Several top U.S. officials have said recently that they believe most of the al-Qaida forces once believed to have been hiding in eastern Afghanistan have now fled to the tribal regions of western Pakistan and beyond, to Pakistan's cities and abroad.

But the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan is porous and not tightly patrolled by authorities from either side. Afghan officials say small groups of al-Qaida forces and their Taliban allies continue to move back and forth across the border, evading the U.S. forces hunting them on the Afghan side and the Pakistani forces looking for them on Pakistan's side of the border.

Three of the most seriously wounded American soldiers have been evacuated to Germany in stable condition. One soldier suffered serious head injuries and another an eye injury. The third received shrapnel wounds to the leg and elbow.

___

(c) 2002, Chicago Tribune.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
hello there & you too