First Wave of U.S. Troops Land in Kandahar

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, November 26, 2001

First Wave of U.S. Troops Land in Kandahar

Hundreds of U.S. Marines landed by helicopter Sunday near the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, the spiritual home and power center of the Taliban, a senior U.S. official said. As many as 1,000 troops could be on the ground there within days.

The official, who spoke in Washington Sunday night on condition of anonymity, would not disclose the troops' mission, but their arrival was the largest deployment of U.S. troops on the ground in Afghanistan since the U.S.-led war began Oct. 7. The war thus far has been conducted primarily from the air.

Kandahar has come under fierce bombardment during the war and the Taliban have vowed to fight to the death rather than abandon it.

Abdul Jabbar, an anti-Taliban Afghan tribal official in Pakistan, said his colleagues in Kandahar confirmed that U.S. troops were on the ground there.

The Marines, numbering in the "low hundreds," were to be followed by several hundred more from Navy ships in the Arabian Sea, the official said. The Marines landed by helicopter southwest of Kandahar, the official said.

The deployment was the largest announced U.S. mission on the ground in Afghanistan since the war began. Hundreds of U.S. special forces are believed to have been in the country for some time.

The arrival of U.S. troops came as the northern alliance claimed to have seized Kunduz, the Taliban's last northern stronghold, after a two-week siege. Also Sunday, hundreds of foreign fighters who had been captured in the area died in a chaotic prison uprising put down in part by U.S. airstrikes.

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