U.S.

Fire At Kandahar Base

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

February 14, 2002 / 7:24 AM EST / CBS

Flares were fired from U.S. positions around the U.S. military base near Kandahar late Thursday, and a fire was burning, but the military said there was no evidence of a fresh attack.

CBS News Correspondent Elizabeth Palmer reports there was fire on the runway at the base, and that it could have been started because of an illumination flare. U.S. Central Command said soldiers had illuminated the area from which weapons fire came on Wednesday, and this started a fire, which the military is working to extinguish. There was no evidence of more incoming weapons fire, the military said.

In Wednesday's attack, intruders who opened fire on the base appeared well-organized and moved within about 50 yards of the U.S. positions, the Army said. Two U.S. soldiers were slightly wounded in the firefight. U.S. forces fought back with machine guns and scrambled helicopter gunships to drive off the attackers.

One soldier cut his little finger and another was grazed on the neck by a bullet, said Maj. Ralph Mills, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command in Florida. Both were back on duty Thursday.

Greenbacks From
The Sky
U.S. aircraft over southern Afghanistan have scattered $100 bills tucked into envelopes bearing a picture of President George W. Bush, witnesses said on Thursday.

Some of the envelopes were carried by the wind and fluttered to earth over the Pakistan border town of Chaman, sending people scrambling for the cash.

"C-130 planes dropped white-coloured paper envelopes with a photo of President Bush and two bills of $100 each," said Abdul Hadi, a resident of Chaman on the border with southern Afghanistan.

"They are actually dropping these over areas across the border but a few were carried away by the wind to this side," Hadi said. "People pushed and fought with each other to get their hands on the envelopes."

The envelopes bore no message, the witnesses said. (REUTERS)

Capt. Tony Rivers said the attackers came within 50 yards of the U.S. defense lines "and appeared well organized." He gave no further details.

The base houses more than 4,100 troops and al-Qaida and Taliban prisoners, the U.S. military said. U.S. forces fought back with machine guns and scrambled helicopter gunships to drive off the attackers.

During Wednesday night's attack, soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division came under fire from the north and west of the airfield and shot back. Apache gunships took to the air to try to determine who the attackerwere.

"The perimeter was never in danger of being breached," Roper said. U.S. soldiers detained seven people who later turned out to be part of a U.S.-backed Afghan security force that helps protect the airfield. They were released. The identity and number of attackers was not known.

The base has come under fire before. On Jan. 10, gunmen in arid scrub north of the runway opened fire as a C-17 transport plane took off with 20 detainees for a U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Two weeks later, an Afghan apparently under the influence of drugs tried to penetrate the base's heavily guarded perimeter, touching off a security alert that briefly grounded a plane. Soldiers captured the man inside the fence and detained him.

Afghan leader Hamid Karzai traveled to the eastern town of Jalalabad on Thursday and was expected to pay his respects at the grave of fellow commander Abdul Haq who was captured and killed by the Taliban in October.

Karzai was due to deliver a speech at the grave of Haq, who, like Karzai, rallied opposition to the Taliban in the wake of the attacks on the United States.

The Afghan Islamic Press said Karzai, who was appointed interim leader in December shortly after the defeat of the Taliban, was leading a large delegation to Jalalabad.

Haq, who is buried about eight miles west of Jalalabad, slipped into Afghanistan from Pakistan after U.S.-led forces launched a military campaign to flush out Osama bin Laden. Haq was trying to raise opposition to the Taliban in late October when he was captured and summarily executed.

Karzai also slipped into Afghanistan. He was chased by Taliban fighters but managed to evade capture.

In other developments:

Afghan Muslim pilgrims, angry over plane delays, attacked and killed Afghanistan's interim transport minister at Kabul airport Thursday, Arabic-language al-Jazeera television reported.

It quoted its reporter in the Afghan capital as saying Air Transport and Tourism Minister Abdul Rahman had gone to the airport to leave on a trip abroad when he was attacked by a large number of disgruntled pilgrims awaiting flights to Saudi Arabia.

Townspeople in an eastern Afghan provincial capital rocked by bloody factional fighting that killed at least 61 people last month cheered and threw flowers Thursday to welcome their new governor, a veteran administrator named to replace a warlord who attacked the town after local leaders refused to accept him as governor. The town council of Gardez said it would accept 77-year-old Taj Mohammad Wardak as the new governor of surrounding Paktia province. But supporters of warlord Bacha Khan, whose forces besieged Gardez for two days in January to press his claim to the governorship, said the job was still rightfully his.

Purdue Universty in Indiana state will help Afghanistan's war-ravaged Kabul University re-establish engineering, agriculture and technology programs and select textbooks, under an agreement signed with the new Afghan education minister, Sherief A. Fayez.

The U.S. Army soldier killed Wednesday at Bagram air base 40 miles north of Kabul, the capital, died of injuries caused when heavy equipment he was working on fell on him, said Maj. Ralph Mills, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Fla. The military identified him as Army Specialist Jason Disney of Fallon, Nevada, 21. He had been assigned to the Seventh Transportation Battalion of Fort Bragg, North Carolina. So far, 20 U.S. soldiers have been killed, just one from hostile fire, said Lt. Col. Dave Lapan, a military spokesman at the Pentagon. Eleven died in aircraft accidents, three in U.S. bombing and five in other accidents. A CIA agent also was killed in a prison uprising near Mazar-e-Sharif. Of 79 soldiers injured, 37 were hurt in aircraft accidents, Lapan said.