WASHINGTON (Islamweb & News Agencies) - The United States used heavily armed AC-130 gunships and MH-60 Black Hawk helicopters on Sunday to help Northern Alliance commanders crush a revolt by foreign Taliban prisoners at a mud-walled fort in northern Afghanistan, U.S. defense officials said.
A Time magazine correspondent reported from the scene outside Mazar-i-Sharif that at least one American, whom he identified as ``Mike'' and said belonged to U.S. special operations forces, was missing and presumed dead after prisoners began firing smuggled weapons.
U.S. television networks ABC and NBC reported the man was believed to be a CIA operative, rather than a member of the military.
CIA spokesman Tom Crispell said the spy agency -- which is reportedly running paramilitary units in Afghanistan made up chiefly of nonuniformed U.S. veterans -- declined to comment on whether any of its operatives or contractors had been injured or killed in the revolt.
If the man was confirmed as a soldier, it would be the first known U.S. combat death in Afghanistan since Washington began attacking Taliban forces hosting Saudi-born exile Osama bin Laden on Oct. 7. Bin Laden and his al Qaeda guerrillas are prime suspects in the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States that killed nearly 4,000 people. (Read photo caption below)
``There were two American soldiers inside the fort: one of whom was disarmed and killed -- he was called Mike -- and another was also in trouble,'' Time correspondent Alex Perry said on the magazine's Web site.
He said U.S. forces mounted a rescue operation after prisoners grabbed weapons from an armory in the fort. The second American's fate was not immediately known, Perry said.
The Pentagon said it knew of no U.S. military casualties from the uprising near Mazar-i-Sharif, west of Kunduz, the Taliban's last northern stronghold.
The Central Command, which is running the U.S.-led campaign in Afghanistan, declined to rule out the possibility that CIA operatives or other non-uniformed U.S. government personnel or contractors might have been hurt or killed in the vast 19th century citadel.
``I can't speak for anybody but the U.S. military,'' said Navy Lt. Cmdr. David Culler, a spokesman at Central Command headquarters in Tampa, Florida.
About 500 prisoners linked to the al Qaeda network grabbed Kalashnikov rifles, machineguns and grenades and battled their Northern Alliance guards in the fort, a Reuters witness said.
Northern Alliance commander Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum mustered about 500 of his troops to counterattack the foreign fighters, ``and we provided support via airstrikes,'' said a Pentagon spokesman, Army Lt. Col. Dan Stoneking.
Another defense official, who declined to be identified, said the non-Afghan Taliban fighters had held the southern part of the complex before the AC-130 gunships and the Black Hawk helicopters helped the Northern Alliance restore control.
PHOTO CAPTION:
FILE - The U.S. military hopes that Afghans seeking a 25 million reward, not American soldiers, will creep through caves hunting for top al-Qaida terrorist leaders including Oasma bin Laden,top right. The bounty offered for bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahri,top left, bin Laden's top lieutenant and other top aides, plus additional reward money from the CIA, should encourage the search Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Monday, Nov. 19, 2001. To spread word of the 25 million reward for getting bin Laden, the U.S. military is dropping local-language leaflets over Afghanistan ``like snowflakes in December in Chicago,'' Rumsfeld said.(AP Photo/Department of Defense)
- Nov 20 1:59 PM ET