New find in 'smoking gun' search

US Special Forces working with Kurdish fighters say they have destroyed a northern Iraqi base here that the US had fingered as an Al Qaeda hideout where militants were experimenting with chemical and biological warfare.

US military officers, who teamed up with officers from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, say they found evidence at the main base of Ansar al-Islam - a fundamentalist Muslim militia believed to have joined forces with Al Qaeda fugitives from Afghanistan - of efforts to develop nonconventional weapons.

The Bush administration has charged that Saddam Hussein was or would soon be passing material for weapons of mass destruction on to Muslim fundamentalist organizations including Al Qaeda. Any concrete proof to support that claim could bolster Washington's position in a world that has been largely resistant or outright opposed to the US-led invasion of Iraq.

But the officials declined to say exactly what they had found or whether there was any evidence to link the militants camped out here to the Iraqi dictator.

"We have found various documents, equipment, and evidence that would indicate a presence of chemical or biological weapons. It has been flown back to the United States," a Special Forces company commander said Tuesday at a joint press press conference in Halabja, a Kurdish city in northern Iraq. "At this point, [exploration] of the site is ongoing."

In a war that has often seemed to be marked by more bad surprises than good, Tuesday was a moment for back-slapping. Kurdish and US forces lauded each other's cooperation in decimating a Taliban-like camp whose members were responsible for a recent suicide attack on a nearby checkpoint that killed an Australian journalist.

But the battle against Al Qaeda and Ansar - whose name means "supporters of Islam" - seemed far from over. Some 70 of the roughly 750 fighters here were killed. The rest escaped into the mountains, some crossing the border with Iran, the officers say.

Local Kurdish officials had already begun to call this village the "Little Tora Bora," a reference to the place in southern Afghanistan where Al Qaeda fighters hid from coalition forces during war there 16 months ago. Similarly, some of the fighters allegedly hid material for weapons of mass destruction in caves in this rocky, mountainous region, which Special Forces were continuing to scour Tuesday for evidence.

"I fought them because they wanted to destroy our freedom," says Burosik Jalal, a Kurdish battalion officer whose men were involved in the attack on Ansar. "They escaped to the mountains, but if someone supports them, such as other Islamic countries, maybe they will just come back."

As of Tuesday, the dust had not fully settled from a campaign that reached its peak over the weekend. A body lay face up near the road up the hillside village. Kurdish fighters say it was an Arab Al Qaeda member who took up position here after being driven out of Afghanistan.

Page: 1 | 2