Weary American troops return to base following eight-day fight

BAGRAM, Afghanistan -- Hundreds of weary U.S. soldiers descended from the Afghan mountains Sunday after a grueling eight-day battle against enemy holdouts. U.S. bombers pounded the caves were the remaining fighters were hiding.

The Army said ground fighting was winding down but that Operation Anaconda would continue until the last of the al-Qaida and Taliban fighters had been killed or surrendered in the Shah-e-Kot mountains.

'We're home!'

About 400 U.S. troops returned to the Bagram air base north of Kabul on Sunday in wave after wave of CH-47 Chinook helicopters.

"We're home!" the soldiers shouted, offering high-fives to elated colleagues. A few shook their heads in disbelief, grateful they had made it out alive.

In Gardez, an Afghan commander, Ismail, said al-Qaida and Taliban forces in the area were "75 percent spent" and he expected a final push within the next two days.

Coalition forces said they killed at least 500 fighters and that about 200 were believed left. Eight Americans and three of their Afghan allies died.

Ismail said American officers told him to wait for more bombing to soften up the last of the enemy forces. Late Sunday, the roar of U.S. jets and the distant thud of explosions could be heard from the battle area.

"They were defeated by these bombs," Ismail said of the al-Qaida and Taliban foes.

Coalition forces cautioned that Operation Anaconda, launched March 2 to crush al-Qaida and Taliban forces in the mountains of Paktia province, was not over. U.S. officials said the operation would continue until the last of the enemy troops surrendered or died.

Ismail said that in the past two days, Australian commandos and vehicles had been dropped into the battle area, presumably to search for small pockets of al-Qaida members who might try to slip away through narrow gorges.

One of the U.S. soldiers returning to Bagram, 2nd Lt. Christopher Blaha, 24, of Great Neck, N.Y., said he had lost two friends in the Sept. 11 terrorism attacks, including his best friend Andrew Stergiopoulos, 23, an employee of the bond-trading firm Cantor Fitzgerald at the World Trade Center.

Recalls WTC casualty

He said he wrote Stergiopoulos's name on every one of his grenades.

"There was definitely a vindictive side," Blaha said upon returning from the front. "I can go back and tell his family everything we did."

The leader of Afghanistan's interim government, Hamid Karzai, sent up to 1,000 additional troops to the region, which he called the "last main base" of al-Qaida and Taliban in Afghanistan.

He acknowledged, however, that there are areas where smaller groups are likely operating.

"We will fight terrorism until we are absolutely sure that they are not there to threaten anybody anywhere in the world," Karzai said.

On Saturday, Afghan fighters told The Associated Press that enemy forces had taken refuge in two caves and were running out of ammunition. However, al-Qaida had ringed the area with land mines, and heavy clouds and snow had made low-level, pinpoint bombing difficult.

Maj. Bryan Hilferty, the 10th Mountain Division spokesman, said some enemy fighters had been captured and were being interrogated, but he declined to say how many.

One captured Arab fighter claimed other Arabs, Tajiks and Uzbeks were still in the caves and that the tunnels had collapsed in the bombing, Afghan intelligence officials said on condition of anonymity.

U.S. troops arriving in Bagram said they had not expected to find so many Taliban and al-Qaida forces waiting for them when they moved into the rugged mountains of Paktia province on March 2.

The soldiers were unprepared for the subfreezing temperatures at 10,000 feet -- some said they hadn't even brought sleeping bags. They spoke of staying awake at night and sleeping by day when it was warmer.

There were cases of hypothermia, they said, and drinking water froze in the cold.

Also Sunday, four men from the Zadran tribe, led by warlord Bacha Khan, were killed when gunmen opened fire Sunday in the eastern town of Khost, according to an Afghan official, Fazal Mir.

Bacha Khan is leading an Afghan militia fighting alongside U.S. troops.

Khost is on the southeastern end of the battle area and is close to the Pakistani border. The area, a hotbed of support for the Taliban and al-Qaida, has been the scene of several sporadic bombings and shootings since the U.S.-led operation began eight days ago.