January 11, 2002	Friday	Shawwal 26, 1422

WASHINGTON, Jan 10: The US military started transporting prisoners of the Al Qaeda network and Taliban on Thursday to a US naval base in Cuba, CNN reported.

Heavily bound and escorted, the prisoners left in two groups of ten on a C-17 military transport.

The prisoners’ faces were shaven clean and they were wearing orange overalls. They were searched at least once and possibly twice.

A US base near the airport came under small arms fire shortly after a US military plane took off with the first group of prisoners, a military spokesman said.

“The forward operating base in Kandahar has received small arms fire at about 1125 EST (1625 GMT) today,” said Navy Commander Frank Merriman, a spokesman for the US Central Command in Washington.

“The reports indicate no injuries in the initial exchange of fire,” he said.

The airport has been used as a base for US forces and a detention center for more than 300 al-Qaeda and Taliban prisoners.

USA Today newspaper reported on Thursday that the prisoners, considered extremely treacherous, would be chained once on board the plane. They would also be outnumbered 2-to-1 by specially trained security guards who will carry stun guns, USA Today reported, citing unnamed military sources.

Reports yesterday said the prisoners may also be sedated with valium.

US forces are now holding about 360 detainees in Afghanistan and on a Navy ship in the Indian Ocean.

US troops have started building holding facilities at the base for up to 2,000 detainees. The prisoners are due to be moved shortly from a US Marine base at Kandahar, central Afghanistan, to another country, from where transport aircraft would take them to the Caribbean island state, Pentagon officials have said.

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said US commanders were authorized to use “appropriate restraint” in transferring the prisoners.

“They are fully aware that these are dangerous individuals,” he said.

HUNT FOR KILLER: Some 200 US marines arrived in the Khost area of eastern Afghanistan on Wednesday after tribal elders decided they could not hand over a fugitive teenager suspected of killing a US soldier, witnesses said.

The elders held a jirga, which was also attended by five US personnel, for several hours in Khost to decide the fate of the 14-year-old boy who disappeared after killing the first US soldier to die in hostile fire in the war.

“The elders of four tribes attending the meeting told the US personnel that they could neither capture the boy nor hand him over to them,” a witness said.

Hours after the meeting, some 200 US troops arrived in the area for a possible search operation to find the missing boy, said the witness.—dpa/AFP/Reuters