1,000 US troops sweep into southern Afghanistan

Up to 1,000 US troops and attack helicopters swept into southern Afghan villages today in a new military operation to flush out al-Qaida terrorists and their allies, a US Army spokesman said.

The operation, code-named "Valiant Strike," began with an early morning air and ground assault and in the remote mountains of southern Kandahar province, Col. Roger King told reporters.

It was a "coincidence" that the operation started as US forces began actions in Iraq, he said.

The military launched the assault after receiving "a mosaic of different intelligence inputs" of activity in the area, King said. Radio transmissions had been detected from caves near the villages, said military officials in Washington.

The attack was focused in the Maruf district of Kandahar province where the Taliban's supreme leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, has tribal links, according to Khalid Pashtun, a spokesman for the Kandahar government. The US forces and their Afghan allies were looking for Taliban in at least three different villages in the mountainous Maruf region.

"The US forces there are looking for Taliban. We don't know about al-Qaida, but we know they are looking for Taliban," Pashtun said.

The assault was one of the most major military operations in Afghanistan since Operation Anaconda just over a year ago, King said. Anaconda pitted hundreds of Taliban and al-Qaida fighters against thousands of US and allied Afghan troops.

Blackhawk, Apache and Chinook helicopters plus armored Humvee vehicles took part in the operation, King said.

The troops left from their base in Kandahar, the former Taliban stronghold in southern Afghanistan.

A similar action in neighboring Helmand province about a month ago left several suspects dead and led to the capture of up to 30 more.

Kandahar province was the spiritual headquarters of the ousted Taliban regime, which was allied with the al-Qaida network suspected of carrying out the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

The latest operation would likely continue for two or three days, US military spokesman Lt. Coryll Angel told The Associated Press.

King said the operation was the latest of at least a dozen carried out by a multinational, US-led coalition fighting terrorists from headquarters at Bagram Air Base. He declined to disclose its goal, or whether it targeted al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

The operation was led by the 800-soldier division known as the "White Devils" of the 82nd Airborne division. Other ground support teams also took part, King and other Army officials said.

There have been a series of raids on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border in the weeks since authorities captured al-Qaida's No. 3 figure, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed - an alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks - in Pakistan on March 1. Officials say that Mohammed is giving information to US interrogators, and that some of the subsequent arrests came as a result of his capture.

Attacks have increased on Afghan government posts in southern Afghanistan in recent weeks. The authorities have blamed remnants of the Taliban, al-Qaida and loyalists of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a renegade rebel commander labeled a terrorist by the United States.

Taliban soldiers ambushed an Afghan government post in the south and killed three Afghan soldiers, a security official said.

The soldiers at Sherabik post, near the Pakistan border, were ambushed early Wednesday and their throats slit by attacking Taliban, said Abdul Razzak Panjshiri, security chief of Spinboldak. Five Taliban attackers were arrested, he said.