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American Morning

Bloody Battle Begins Against Dug-In Al Qaeda Fighters

Aired December 14, 2001 - 08:04   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.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: America's allies in Afghanistan have been able to rout the Taliban without few major battles, but now what could be a final bloody battle is under way against al Qaeda fighters trapped in Tora Bora. Those al Qaeda fighters, possibly led by Osama bin Laden, are dug in deep in a rugged piece of mountainous real estate.

Our Brent Sadler has the very latest on the relentless air assault and uphill ground attack. Brent, what's the latest from there at this hour?

BRENT SADLER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Thanks, Paula -- good morning.

Well, hunt-and-kill operations against the al Qaeda network in the Tora Bora mountain range were certainly stepped up this day. There's a lull right now, but for many, many hours from just after daybreak -- we can show you the video now -- wave upon wave of U.S. bombers have been pounding a very small concentrated area in the mountain range in eastern Afghanistan here.

Bomb after bomb hitting areas, single bombs, multiple bombs, shaking the valleys, waking everybody up here and really, really putting the entire media quarters watching this event on absolute (UNINTELLIGIBLE), because it does seem with this stepped up air activity that perhaps there's a climax being reached in this ongoing mountain war.

Now, we're getting reports from Eastern Alliance Afghan commanders that they have made significant inroads -- those reports unconfirmed, we haven't seen it with our own eyes -- that they're closing in on some of the top leadership targets. This in concert, as we know, from reports that special operations are being extremely effective up in the mountains, particularly in poor visibility over the 24 -- past 24 hours, enabling their stealthy operations to go ahead and scoring some successes. So as you see, incredible bombing attacks throughout this day.

Now, also this afternoon, before the end of the daytime here, journalists were taken up to the front, the same place I was at a couple of days ago, to show how that had been put back under the control of the Eastern Alliance, and there was a brief exchange of fire. Journalists came under attack again, a few shots popped at them, no injuries, but certainly it proves that even though we've seen all of this incredible bombing activity, al Qaeda members are still hanging on up there.

Now, CNN's Ben Wedeman, my colleague, who is the Cairo Bureau Chief, my Arabic-speaking colleague, has just come back a short time ago with an incredible piece of videotape. I want to show you a snippet of it now. Ben Wedeman up there on the front line, talking by radio to al Qaeda terrorists a short distance away, and Ben is asking them about what it's like up there. And they're telling him that they are enduring the air assault. He asked them about whether or not they were going to surrender a couple of days ago. The al Qaeda voice said no, that was all lies.

This conversation went on for several minutes. Ben asked about Osama bin Laden. With that question, the radio contact was broken off. So our Ben Wedeman is, right now, editing that video, looking at all of those snippets of conversation, and we'll be bringing that to you later -- back to you, Paula.

ZAHN: Brent Sadler -- thanks so much.

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