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CNN Saturday Morning News

Operation Mountain Lion Concludes

Aired April 06, 2002 - 08:47   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:. Inside the war in Afghanistan, an exclusive look at the latest mission for U.S. troops. Operation Mountain Lion was the first large-scale action in Afghanistan since Operation Anaconda ended mid-March.

Our Ryan Chilcote was the only television journalist present during that mission. He joins us now live from Kandahar with more on this -- Ryan, I know you shot this video, too, right there with the soldiers.

RYAN CHILCOTE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes. It was quite a mission, in fact, that ended today. It was a six day mission involving some 400 soldiers from the 101st Airborne. The last of those troops were airlifted out of eastern Afghanistan, where they were just shy of the Pakistani border, in fact. Today their return back to the Bagram Air Base had been delayed by two days because of bad weather.

So those troops, I was actually with those troops as they were entering caves in eastern Afghanistan. They, it was quite fascinating, actually. They were looking for evidence of, any kind of evidence that they might gather to hunt down al Qaeda and Taliban forces. And they were also, you know, very aware of the fact that there might be booby traps in those caves.

So it was a very, you know, the adrenaline was really running inside of those caves.

Lastly, they went, when they had collected their evidence, they attempted to destroy the caves so that they could no longer be used by al Qaeda or Taliban forces. So it was quite a trip there -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS:. All right, Ryan Chilcote, thank you very much.

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