<

Anaconda Is Success; Enemy Killed Unknown, Say Officials
Friday, March 15, 2002
By Gerry J. Gilmore
American Forces Press Service

Other terrorists who'd escaped across Afghanistan's borders would like to come back, the secretary noted. "They are determined to attack U.S. military forces and U.S. interests in Afghanistan, and elsewhere, to attempt to show their strength," Rumsfeld said.

WASHINGTON -- AFIS
Senior DoD leaders today called Operation Anaconda a success, while noting the difficulty to fully ascertain enemy losses as the campaign continues to wind down.

Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and Marine Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Pentagon reporters that the two-week-old Operation Anaconda campaign against al Qaeda and Taliban troops in eastern Afghanistan was "highly successful."

U.S., coalition and allied Afghan forces are now making final sweeps of the mountainous region "looking into the caves that have been uncovered and those types of things," Pace said. About 1,000 U.S. and coalition forces remain in the 65-square-mile area of operations, he estimated.

"The enemy forces that were there, to the best of our ability to monitor, are not there now," the general noted. "Some have been killed. Some have escaped. We don't know the exact numbers.
(More: DoD News Source)
2002 © The United States Department of Defense.

Dan