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CNN Saturday Morning News

U.S. Acknowledges Ground Strikes in Afghanistan

Aired October 20, 2001 - 11:36   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.
MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN ANCHOR: Two U.S. soldiers in Pakistan were killed in a helicopter crash. The Pentagon says the chopper was standing by for search and rescue duty. One other person was injured.

President Bush acknowledged the casualties at the APEC Summit in Shanghai today. The president also called on leaders to join the fight against terrorism, saying, quote, "every nation must now oppose this enemy or be, in turn, its target," unquote.

Obviously, the U.S.-led military campaign is moving into a new phase. The telegenic air strikes we saw for several days are now being accompanied by hit-and-run commando raids conducted far from any cameras.

CNN's Sheilah Kast joins us now from the Pentagon with the latest on this covert campaign -- Sheilah.

SHEILAH KAST, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Martin, we're expecting to hear in a half an hour of less from General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is going to be briefing the press, which will give us an opportunity, we hope, to add to what we know about this first ground action in the war.

We know that about 100-or-so Special Operations combat troops went into Afghanistan by helicopter for a ground action on Friday night. It included light infantry Army Rangers. And we don't know exactly what the target was. They went in the area of Kandahar. There's one report that the target was at the Kandahar Airport. Kandahar is the base -- the military base of the ruling Taliban government.

This was described as a liaison operation; that is, U.S. troops working with the Northern Alliance, the main military opposition to the Taliban. But so far, we are still trying to find out what the objective of the attack was, and whether it was considered successful.

So, some of the kinds of things we'll be asking General Myers would be whether there were casualties and, as I said, whether or not the objective of the raid was met.

One of the things the Pentagon has said is that all the helicopters which went into Afghanistan have come out again.

Just hours before this first ground action, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld was telling reporters that the Taliban are a very formidable opponent.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD RUMSFELD, DEFENSE SECRETARY: It's going to take time. And the people on the ground there are very tough. They have been fighting each other and others for a long time. They're survivors. They know the terrain. They know how to move around in that terrain. And it is going to be a lot easier, in my view, to try to persuade a number of them to oppose the Taliban and to oppose al Qaeda, and to help defeat them, than it is to, in fact, to defeat them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KAST: Even though they are a tough opponent, U.S. sources said that the Taliban has no -- quote, "no evidence" for its claim that it was responsible for bringing down the helicopter -- the search and rescue helicopter that went down in southwestern Pakistan. It went down about 15 miles south of the Afghan border.

One U.S. official is quoted as saying that that accident may have been caused by a problem called brown out, where the rotor blades of the helicopter kicked up dust and debris as the helicopter was landing -- Martin.

SAVIDGE: Sheilah Kast reporting to us live from the Pentagon.

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