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American Morning

American Troops Search Afghan Mountains for al Qaeda

Aired June 03, 2002 - 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.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Let's start again with the war against terrorism. Troops of the 101st Airborne Division have raided an area in the eastern mountains of Afghanistan looking for al Qaeda fighters. The question, though, did they find any?

Mike Boettcher, live at the Bagram Air Base, with more details on the raid that took place hours ago -- Mike, hello.

MIKE BOETTCHER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Bill.

We just got back from that mission shortly, a couple of hours ago. It went on for two days. Now, the reason for the mission was intelligence gathered by sources in the coalition that indicated that there were more than 12, and perhaps a reinforcement squad of, al Qaeda people in the area that we went to, of up to 60. The assault started after dawn on Sunday morning. It involved more than 150 troops of Bravo Company, of the 101st Airborne Division's 187th Infantry, the Second Battalion of that infantry.

They landed with a force of about 150 and proceeded very cautiously because they felt that they were going to land in a hot landing zone. That means that -- a hot zone is one that could be attacked by al Qaeda.

There were no al Qaeda there, but they continued on to their objective and found several caves. Now, these caves had been around for a long time. They did a cave-to-cave search, looking for anything that would be of intelligence value. They did find some documents. We don't know if they were important. A cursory review of the documents show that they didn't look to be important documents from al Qaeda.

But it appeared that al Qaeda had been using this from time to time. This was a way station for them.

Now, they did, the demolition teams from Bravo Company, blew up the cave entrances of three separate caves, and it was quite a sight. They used several large explosives to do this, and as you see there -- I kind of jumped out of the way, Bill. We didn't know it was coming.

So anyway, the operation is over. Everyone who went there came back, and they completed their mission successfully -- Bill.

HEMMER: Mike, thanks. Mike Boettcher reporting live from the Bagram Air Base, north of Kabul.

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