WASHINGTON, Dec 4: More than 1,300 US Marines have begun prowling the desert around their new base in southern Afghanistan to watch for and attack enemy Taliban and al Qaeda forces, the Pentagon said on Tuesday.

“They have started to move around and will contribute to the interdiction efforts,” Defense Department spokeswoman Victoria Clarke told reporters in response to questions.

She declined to elaborate, but other defense officials told Reuters the Marines were watching roads along with elite US special operations troops. They said the Marines were not attacking cave and tunnel complexes where fugitive Osama bin Laden or members of his al Qaeda network might be hiding.

Clarke spoke ahead of a news conference by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on the two-month-old military campaign.

Hundreds of Marines from US warships in the northern Indian Ocean began setting up a base at the desert airstrip about 55 miles (90 km) southwest of the besieged Taliban stronghold of Kandahar on Nov. 25 and have solidified their presence with attack helicopters and light armor.

That deployment has grown as forces of southern Afghan Pashtun tribes opposed to the Taliban tighten their grip around Kandahar and continue to negotiate for the possible surrender of the city.

But Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar has called on his troops to fight to the death and there was no concrete sign that the city might be turned over to the opposition, avoiding a blood bath in any house-to-house assault.

US defense officials have refused to rule out direct participation by the Marines in any assault on Kandahar. But US Army Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of the American military operation, told reporters earlier that fighting in Kandahar was not the central mission of the Marines.

“We have got a little bit north of (more than) some 1,300 Marines in Afghanistan,” Clarke told reporters on Tuesday.

“They are there for the obvious purpose of putting real pressure on the Taliban and the al Qaeda. They have started to move around and will contribute to the interdiction efforts. But we are not going beyond that,” she said.

As a major US bombing campaign against the Taliban and al Qaeda continued for a 59th day, Clarke said 160 sorties were flown by American heavy bombers and strike jets on Tuesday, striking chiefly around Kandahar and Jalalabad in northeastern Afghanistan.

“The targets mainly were tunnel and cave complexes,” she said of the hundreds of mountain hide-outs where the United States believes Osama and other senior al Qaeda officials might be hiding near the two cities.

Responding to questions, Clarke said she did not have any information to substantiate media reports that the US military might be holding as many as two or three American-born Taliban fighters captured by opposition troops.—Reuters