SOUTHERN AFGHANISTAN (Islamweb & News Agencies) - Newly landed U.S. Marines cemented control of an outpost in the Kandahar region Monday as Navy fighter jets attacked a convoy of armored enemy vehicles moving near the base in southern Afghanistan.
Two F-14 Tomcats hit the armored column, said Maj. Brad Lowell, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command in Washington. He said Marine AH-1W Cobra helicopters were in the area but did not fire on the armored vehicles.
Earlier Marine spokesman Capt. David Romley said Cobras had attacked 15 tanks and armored personnel carriers and destroyed some of them. As he spoke with reporters shortly before midnight local time, he indicated combat continued.
There was no word on casualties for either side.
At the base, helicopters and transport planes ferried in troops and equipment late into the night, and the Pentagon said it would take at least another day to reach the full complement of about 1,000 Marines. The aircraft were operating off the USS Peleliu hundreds of miles away in the northern Arabian Sea and from unidentified bases on the coast.
In Washington, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld declined to talk about what kinds of operations might be staged from the base. He suggested only that it would ratchet up the pressure on the leaders of the Taliban and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network by further hindering their movements in the Kandahar area.
Earlier, President Bush said the Marines would assist in hunting down terrorists linked to the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
The base is isolated, with no signs of towns in the distance across the flat desert. The only lights for miles around were the runway lights installed by the Marines and lights burning inside the airstrip's buildings.