Operation Anaconda pounds al Qaeda

SURMAD, Afghanistan -- U.S. warplanes pounded al Qaeda and Taliban mountain strongholds in eastern Afghanistan on Monday while hundreds of coalition ground troops scoured the rugged, snow-covered terrain for pockets of enemy fighters. The heavily armed defenders responded with bursts of mortars, grenades and machine gun fire.\nSeven Americans died Monday when two helicopters took enemy fire in the offensive -- code-named Operation Anaconda. The attack marked the first time U.S. conventional ground troops have been used in an offensive operation.\nThe code name Anaconda apparently was chosen because the giant South American snake of that name crushes its victims encircled in the muscular coils of its body. The operation was said to be designed to cut off all means of escape for al Qaeda and Taliban holed up in the region.\nThe offensive, which includes about 2,000 Afghans, Americans and special operations forces from six allied nations, is the largest U.S.-led ground operation of the five-month Afghan war.\nWave after wave of B-52s and other aircraft unleashed bombs for a fourth day to try to soften enemy positions in the snowcapped peaks.\n"In one minute, I counted 15 bombs," Rehmahe Shah, a security guard at the intelligence unit in the provincial capital Gardez, said Monday.\nIn the eastern Afghan town of Khost near the border, troops at the American-controlled air base called in air support early Monday after the base came under small arms fire, said Maj. Brad Lowell, another spokesman at the U.S. Central Command.\nNo one was injured and the firing stopped, he said.\nIn Tampa, Fla., Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, said units of the 10th Mountain Division and the 101st Airborne Division had been inserted into the battle area.\nFranks refused to say how many al Qaeda and Taliban were holed up in the extensive labyrinth of caves and ravines at the base of the mountains.\nThe commander described the ground operation as a series of short, often intense clashes with small numbers of fugitives fought in bitter cold at elevations of 8,000 to 12,000 feet.\n"We might find five enemy soldiers in one place and then perhaps some distance away from there we may find three and then some distance we may find 15 or 20," Franks said. He described the battle area as "a very, very tough operating environment for our soldiers to be in."\nHowever, Roseuddin, an Afghan civilian who was in the village of Shah-e-Kot shortly before the attacks began, estimated the al Qaeda and Taliban force at about 600, commanded by a former Taliban officer, Saif Rahman.\nRoseuddin said the fighters had been storing provisions for months in anticipation of a bloody siege.\n"They told people: 'If you want to leave or stay it is up to you,'" Roseuddin said. "'But we're staying in those caves because they were ours in the holy war against Russia,'" he quoted the fighters as saying in reference to the war against the Soviets in the 1980s.\nAbout 40 U.S. troops, including 11 injured Monday, have been wounded since the operation began Friday night in the snow-covered mountains southwest of Gardez.\nDefense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said half of the wounded were already back in the fight and the others were evacuated from the region.\nNeither the former Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar nor al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden was believed to be in the area.\nAfghan and Western officials estimate there are up to 5,000 al Qaeda fighters remaining in Afghanistan.