Ferocious fighting in 'final push'

Ferocious close-quarter fighting raged for a sixth day today as the United States deployed hundreds of reinforcements and gathered 5,000 Afghan troops for an offensive aimed at finishing off al Qaeda and Taliban resistance.

Before every advance B52 bombers pounded deeply entrenched enemy forces with cave-busting bombs. And the Americans hammered home their aerial dominance by ordering 17 attack helicopters and several A-10 aircraft with rapid-fire cannon and rockets to strafe the battlefield.

Although US commanders now estimate-that at least 500 al Qaeda and Taliban fighters have been wiped out - more than half the total force - no one is predicting that the final push will be easy. Individual units, well armed, highly trained and fanatical are still reported to be presenting pockets of stiff resistance.

However, such is the intensity of the latest US-led coalition push that some battlefield commanders predicted the operation could be wrapped up in days.

The commander of Operation Anaconda, Major General Frank L Hagenbeck, said his troops had the upper hand after killing hundreds of fighters holed up in the hills around the village of Shah-e-Kot in Eastern Afghanistan.

Maj Gen Hagenbeck said his forces had suffered no further casualties in the last two days. "In the last 24 hours we have killed lots, lots of al Qaeda and Taliban ... we've got confirmed kills in the hundreds," he said.

"As long as they want to send them here, we'll kill them here. Should they go somewhere else, we'll go with our Afghan allies and coalition forces and kill them wherever they go," he added.

In Kabul, Afghan prime minister Hamid Karzai said the coalition was prepared to take as long as necessary to crush al Qaeda.?It may be a day or two, or it may take longer," he said. "We are determined like hell."

Major Bryan Hilfery, spokesman for the 10th Mountain Division at Bagram, said today that coalition forces were progressively destroying the enemy equipment and had killed 100 fighters alone in the past 24 hours. US commander General Tommy Franks said he has increased the number of Americans in the operation by 200 to 300 over the past two days, for a total of around 1,100.

"There are 5,000 soldiers collecting in Shah-e-Kot for a final offensive on the al Qaeda to finish them off," said Ismail Khan, a commander who brought in men from his base in Jaji, north-east of Gardez. "It will be the final push."

US forces are driven by chilling accounts of how horrified observers watched on a spy plane camera as a Navy Seal was captured by al Qaeda fighters and executed. Petty Officer Neil Roberts, 32, was dragged away and shot in the head after falling from a helicopter hit by enemy fire.

Commanders had access to realtime surveillance videos shot by an unmanned Predator aircraft and could only watch helplessly as the events unfolded before them.

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