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CNN Saturday Morning News

U.S. Forces Move al Qaeda Prisoners to Airport in Mazar-e Sharif

Aired December 29, 2001 - 08:03   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.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Let's now go back to Afghanistan. This time we go live to the Tora Bora region.

CNN's Walter Rodgers is there with the latest developments in the hunt for Osama bin Laden -- hello, Walter.

WALTER RODGERS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hello, Kyra.

U.S. special forces in Afghanistan have spent the better part of today, at least some of them, moving prisoners, al Qaeda prisoners. Those are the Arabs who fought with Osama bin Laden. They've been held at a fortress near Mazar-e Sharif along with some Afghans.

U.S. special forces wearing body armor and carrying automatic rifles took the al Qaeda prisoners and the Afghans to the airport in the Mazar-e Sharif area. They're being flown to Kandahar, where my colleague, Bill Hemmer is. There will be interrogation down there.

The U.S. special forces have also been active in this area, in the Tora Bora region. Special forces are still operating in small pockets back in the mountains. I was back there earlier today. We ran across one small group of them of about eight to 10 U.S. special forces officers. As soon as they saw we were journalists, they went to ground real quickly. They asked their Eastern Alliance partners with whom they're working back in the mountains to tell us we were not welcome and we were turned around.

Interesting parallel because earlier in the day when the special forces units were going back up the mountain to sit, patrol, whatever they were doing up there today and whatever they didn't want us to see, they almost showed off in front of the TV cameras here. Riding all terrain vehicles and several trucks, they went back up into the mountains.

But it's different than what we've seen in the past. In the past they've been camping out up there. Late this afternoon the same group came back down the mountain. They didn't take tents. They didn't take overnight kits up there. We're really not sure what they're doing. There was not a lot of activity when we chanced upon them earlier in the day.

One additional piece of information in this area, a short while ago we saw a U.S. B-52 coming out of Diego Garcia, over flying us, leaving a contrail, make three or four sweeps, over flying us, dropping no bombs here. There have been no bombs dropped in the Tora Bora region for almost a week now. Some bombs dropped several days ago in the host region.

The new Afghan defense minister is calling for an end to all U.S. bombing. But again, we have heard no bombs drop here and there haven't been any bombs falling on Afghanistan in the near past -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: All right, Walter Rodgers, thank you so much.

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