U.S. forces may go all out

WASHINGTON -- American military forces in Afghanistan, now numbering up to 2,000 troops, may resort to extraordinary measures to crush the Taliban militia and root out al-Qaida terrorists from fortified cave and tunnel hide-outs, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Sunday.

Rumsfeld described the situation in Kandahar, the last remaining Taliban stronghold, as confused, and acknowledged the difficulty of penetrating cave systems deep in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan.

"We're entering a very dangerous aspect of this conflict," he said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "The remaining task is a particularly dirty and unpleasant one."

Rumsfeld was asked whether U.S. forces might pour gas into the cave complexes to flush out the terrorists.

"One will do whatever it is necessary to do," he replied. "If people will not surrender, then they've made their choice." He noted that in Mazar-e-Sharif, opposition forces flooded a tunnel in order to get the last al-Qaida fighters, whom he called "dead-enders," to come out and surrender.

U.S. commanders have not decided whether U.S. ground forces will be sent on a cave-by-cave manhunt. For now, the U.S.-led campaign is relying on the persuasive power of airstrikes near Kandahar and in the mountains south of Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan, and the incentive of $25 million in reward money for information from Afghan locals on the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants.

The cave complexes that bin Laden may be using are dug deep into mountains and have ventilation and power systems that enable their inhabitants to operate indefinitely.

Anti-Taliban forces, meanwhile, claimed U.S. bombing raids had mistakenly destroyed one of their headquarters in eastern Afghanistan Sunday, killing at least eight people.

At U.S. Central Command headquarters in Tampa, Fla., spokesman Lt. Col. Mark Compton said the command was looking into the reports but had no immediate information about the latest attacks.

Unsure of numbers

Rumsfeld said Pentagon officials do not know exactly how many Taliban fighters remain in and around Kandahar, in the southwest, only that they number in the thousands.

He said there are now between 1,500 and 2,000 American forces in Afghanistan, and that they face great risks.

"We expect that there will be casualties, we expect that there will be people captured," Rumsfeld said.

Asked whether the American public should be prepared for a few months of bloody battles in Afghanistan, Rumsfeld replied, "Oh, I wouldn't limit it to that." He offered no prediction how long it would take.

Secretary of State Colin Powell said the U.S. military, in coordination with Afghan opposition forces, has put the Taliban and al-Qaida under enormous pressure to give up.

"Their options are being limited as more and more territory passes out of Taliban control," he said on CBS' "Face the Nation."