WASHINGTON, March 8: “Terrible weather” in eastern Afghanistan on Friday slowed a US-led military assault on trapped and fiercely resisting Al Qaeda forces, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said.
He said winter conditions in the high mountains near Gardez were limiting air strikes by US warplanes to satellite-guided bombs and preventing AC-130 flying gunships from using 105mm cannon and 40mm machineguns against entrenched guerillas.
Other defence officials said the harsh winter also was keeping US attack helicopters temporarily out of the battle.
Rumsfeld appeared in television interviews to back away from a prediction made on Thursday that a week-long assault by more than 2,000 US-led troops on hundreds of guerillas might be over as early as this weekend.
But he expressed confidence that it could end in days.
“It looked to me like it would be days, meaning seven, eight, 10 as opposed to weeks or months,” he said in response to questions on Fox television about a prediction made earlier to Pentagon workers.
“The weather is just terrible so that a lot of our air assets are not able to fly. But my guess is that over the coming period of some days ... it will wind down,” Rumsfeld said on Friday.
“No. These things are not predictable,” he responded when asked in a CNN interview if the assault led by American troops on a stronghold of regrouping Al Qaeda and Taliban was all but over.
“There are still any number of Al Qaeda and probably Taliban located in those caves and tunnels and in very well-entrenched positions. They have got a lot of ammunition,” Rumsfeld added.
But he said the Al Qaeda and Taliban remained surrounded and “I don’t believe they are getting reinforcements or supplies”.
In Afghanistan, the US military said on Friday Al Qaeda’s resistance was faltering after nearly a week of fierce fighting, with coalition forces gaining the higher ground.
With the battle in its seventh day, the US military said a large number of Al Qaeda fighters were killed in overnight battles and routes used by reinforcements were being cut off. They were showing no signs of giving up.
“Right now the mortar fire is not that accurate because we command a lot of the OPs (observation points) that they used to command,” Army Col. Frank Wiercinski of the US 101st Airborne Division told reporters at Bagram Air Base, north of the Afghan capital Kabul.
Some 2,000 coalition troops, including more than 1,200 from the United States and others from Australia, Canada, France and other European countries — are taking part in Operation Anaconda in the rugged Arma mountains of Afghanistan’s eastern Paktia province.
B-52 bombers and other warplanes have kept up round-the-clock strikes against Al Qaeda positions there.
US officials say the coalition has killed hundreds of fighters since the largest offensive of the war began on Saturday against a stronghold of the Al Qaeda, but they say hundreds more remain.
“Operation Anaconda” was initially expected to conclude this weekend.
But the larger than expected number of Al Qaeda fighters - “about 1,000” according to one source — the intensity of the clashes, the determination of the fighters, who are mostly non-Afghans, and the large quantity of weapons and supplies at their disposal make that date too optimistic, the sources said.—Reuters\AFP