Marines capture outpost

SOUTHERN AFGHANISTAN - Newly landed U.S. Marines cemented control of an outpost in the Kandahar region Monday as Navy fighter jets attacked a convoy of armored enemy vehicles moving near the base in southern Afghanistan. \nTwo F-14 Tomcats hit the armored column, said Maj. Brad Lowell, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command in Washington. He said Marine AH-1W Cobra helicopters were in the area but did not fire on the armored vehicles. \nEarlier Marine spokesman Capt. David Romley said Cobras had attacked 15 tanks and armored personnel carriers and destroyed some of them. As he spoke with reporters shortly before midnight local time, he indicated combat continued. \nThere was no word on casualties for either side.. \nNorthern alliance troops aided by U.S. special forces fought a pitched battle in a sprawling mud-walled fortress for a second day Monday with captured loyalists of Osama bin Laden. Five Americans were wounded by a stray U.S. bomb, and by nightfall it was still unclear whether the rebellion had been crushed. \nU.S. Marines went into action in southern Afghanistan, blasting an armored convoy with helicopter gunships. It was the Marines' first known action since establishing a foothold Monday near the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar. Cobra gunships destroyed some of the 15 vehicles in the column, Capt. David Romley told reporters. \nPresident Bush warned Americans to be prepared for U.S. casualties. Speaking in Washington, he said the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan was "just the beginning" of the fight against terrorism, and he warned Iraq and North Korea there would be consequences for producing weapons of mass destruction. \nIn the north, prisoners captured by the alliance last weekend in the siege of Kunduz rained rocket-propelled grenades and mortars on alliance troops trying to suppress the uprising. \nHundreds of Pakistanis, Chechens, Arabs and other non-Afghans fighting with the Taliban were brought to the fortress here as part of the weekend surrender of Kunduz, the Islamic militia's last stronghold in the north. \nOnce inside the fortress Sunday, the prisoners stormed the armory and were still resisting the next day despite U.S. airstrikes and attacks by alliance forces. \nOne CIA operative was missing in the uprising, according to a U.S. official speaking on condition of anonymity.\nAmerican special forces troops called in an airstrike but a U.S. JDAM smart bomb went astray, exploding near the Americans. Five U.S. soldiers suffered serious wounds and were evacuated to nearby Uzbekistan, Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in Washington. Their identities were not released. \nAlliance officers said about 40 of their troops had died in the uprising along with hundreds of resisters. Alliance commanders said the holdouts, trapped in a tower, were running out of ammunition and wouldn't last long. \n"Those who are left over will be dead," said Alim Razim, an aide to alliance Gen. Rashid Dostum. "None of them can escape." \nIn other developments: \n• Britain took several thousand troops off 48-hour alert, citing an improving situation on the ground in Afghanistan. Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon also confirmed that four British soldiers had been injured in operations with U.S. forces in Afghanistan, but he gave no details. He said all were being treated in Britain. \n• Police detained 14 people in Belgium and France in connection with the September slaying of Ahmed Shah Massood, military leader of Afghanistan's northern alliance. The suspects are believed connected to a group that gave false Belgian ID papers to members of bin Laden's terrorist network. \n• A Vatican delegation met with former Afghan king Mohammad Zaher Shah on the eve of talks to determine the war-ravaged country's political future. Afghan faction representatives are to meet near Bonn on Tuesday in hopes of forming a transitional administration and a security force to police Afghanistan now that the Taliban has all but collapsed. \n• Helped by U.S. and northern alliance troops, 12 Russian transport planes arrived in Kabul carrying aid crews, President Vladimir Putin said. The Russian Foreign Ministry said experts arrived to defuse land mines on the road leading to a planned Russian aid center. \nUnder terms of the Kunduz surrender, foreign fighters were to be imprisoned here pending an investigation into their links with bin Laden, alleged architect of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States. \nThousands of Afghan Taliban fighters who gave up were allowed safe passage out of Kunduz. However, some Afghan fighters remained behind and fired on alliance troops who entered the city Monday after the two-week siege. \nAfter an hours-long battle with rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons, alliance forces crushed the last of the resistance, killing about 100 Taliban and suffering 10 dead, alliance officers said. \nAlliance troops then sought vengeance on the holdouts, roaming through the dust-covered streets. Reporters watched as alliance soldiers blasted away at wounded Taliban and dragged those who hid out of their houses for beatings. \nAlliance fighters beat one overweight Taliban fighter with rifle butts and stomped on his face, throwing him into a truck bound for a detention center only when he fell unconscious. \nThree other fly-covered Taliban bodies lay in empty market stalls. Their big toes had been tied together with cords. Residents said the northern alliance had captured the wounded men in fighting Sunday, then shot them Monday. \nAlliance soldiers also made off with loot, especially cars they said belonged to Taliban fighters. One man used rope to string four cars together, not content with stealing one. \nSince the fall of Mazar-e-Sharif on Nov. 9, Taliban control has collapsed in Kabul and most of the country. \nThe Taliban's days in Kandahar appeared numbered with the arrival Sunday night of U.S. Marines, who seized an airstrip west of the city without resistance and established a forward base for operations against bin Laden and what was left of the Taliban leadership. \nThe Marines' commander, Gen. James Mattis, said more than 1,000 troops would be on the ground within 48 hours in striking distance of Kandahar, the last city under Taliban control.