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CNN Live At Daybreak

House in the Hills: Bin Laden's Hideout

Aired December 20, 2001 - 05:37   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CATHERINE CALLAWAY, CNN ANCHOR: Well, if Osama bin Laden has escaped Afghanistan, he and his al Qaeda fighters left behind what appears to be a primary stronghold.

CNN's Amanda Kibel went to take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AMANDA KIBEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): We followed the road north out of Kandahar City into the mountains lining the way shells of old Soviet tanks now well beyond use after U.S. bombing. Ten kilometers later on the edge of the Myukun (ph) Mountains , we entered an area not seen by westerners and by few Afghans since the Taliban took control of Kandahar six years ago.

This was the stronghold of Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda fighters. Strangers were not welcome here. In a series of caves and underground bunkers built into the landscape, Osama bin Laden and hundreds of al Qaeda lived and worked.

In this cave a stockpile of thousands of artillery shells just some of which we could reach. The rest we were told hidden deep in tunnels, which stretched for kilometers into the mountains. Anti- Taliban forces discovered this cave two days after Kandahar fell. Not far from here a solitary house where al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden once lived.

(on camera): Osama bin Laden, we are told, built this house specifically as a hideout -- a place to shelter when he felt unsafe and it's here that he came when U.S. bombings on Kandahar began. It is also from this house, we are told by locals, that Osama bin Laden finally fled Kandahar.

(voice-over): In one room, piles of mortar bombs about 30 rows high and five rows deep line the walls. A rough count totaled four to 5,000. In the grounds of the house, boxes of heavy machine gun bullets, Russian and Chinese made, some stacked almost six feet high beside these wooden cases filled with the same. And then still more piles of linked ammunition for heavy machineguns -- altogether another rough count, many hundreds of thousands of these bullets.

Mujahideen forces have begun collecting the abandoned weapons and munitions. They will be held in a storage facility on the outskirts of Kandahar and eventually handed over to Afghanistan's new interim government.

But Osama bin Laden was not only preparing for war here, he claimed this land, Afghan land, as his own and tried to turn its natural resources to profit. A large hole in the ground and a hole in the mountain, evidence of Osama bin Laden's attempts to mine for gold here.

He was never very successful and machinery and equipment he used were outdated, left over from 30 years ago and just not up to the job.

Across the mountainside, rubble and craters, all that remain of what were once was al Qaeda living quarters. Built under ground, the bunkers were bombed in U.S. attacks. About 600 al Qaeda fighters lived here, a few hundred died here. Littering the ground, we found small paper leaflets.

UNIDENTIFIED AFGHAN MALE: This is what came from the plane from America.

KIBEL: Messages from the United States to Taliban and al Qaeda fighters. This one instructions for surrender. "Put your hands on your head, it reads, face your weapons to the ground. Wait until we call you. Don't move. Slowly, slowly walk towards us."

But there was no slow walk to surrender here. Most of the al Qaeda fighters who once held these mountains left suddenly and by all accounts very quickly.

Amanda Kibel, CNN, Kandahar, Afghanistan.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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