SPIN BOLDAK, Afghanistan, 30 January 2003 — Hundreds of US troops scoured remote mountain caves in southeast Afghanistan yesterday, searching for survivors of a major battle with rebels that suggested anti-American factions were trying to regroup.

At least 18 fighters said to be linked to renegade warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar were killed in a clash with the largest enemy force the US military had encountered since "Operation Anaconda" last March.

"Enemy casualties are being assessed as the forces sweep this mountainous area searching for more enemy forces, weapons caches and intelligence information," said US military spokesman Roger King at the US Afghan headquarters at Bagram, north of Kabul.

"Operations will continue today as this mountainous area contains at least 160 caves that have been counted so far, quite possibly more than that," he told reporters.

Khalid Pashtun, spokesman for the governor of the southern city of Kandahar, said Tuesday that Hekmatyar’s men were fighting alongside Taleban and Al-Qaeda fighters. Hekmatyar has denied joining forces with the Taleban and Al-Qaeda.

The operation near the Pakistan border coincides with a huge buildup of US forces in the Gulf region readying for a possible attack on Iraq.

US and allied warplanes pounded the cave complex with 2,000- and 500-lb bombs overnight on Monday after a tip-off from a captured rebel, and up to 400 US soldiers and Afghan allies have been searching the area for survivors since Tuesday morning.

King said US forces were still trying to establish how many rebels were in the area after initial information had suggested there were about 80 men in the group.

"People were coming and going out of caves so there is the potential for more people to be there and we may still find them," King said.

In Anaconda, the biggest US ground offensive of the Afghan war to date, about 1,500 US troops tried to flush out a force of some 1,000 Taleban and Al-Qaeda militants from cave hideouts in eastern Afghanistan.

US and Afghan officials suspect the rebels were loyal to Hekmatyar, a former commander with the anti-Soviet Mujahedeen forces who has vowed to fight US soldiers on Afghan soil.

King said a US Special Forces team captured a rebel on Monday after coming under small-arms fire near the border town of Spin Boldak. He told them of the group hiding in the mountains and said he was linked to Hekmatyar’s Hezb-e-Islami faction.

"We had other intelligence that I can’t go into that also indicated involvement of his (Hekmatyar’s) groups," King said.

He added there was "no indication" that Hekmatyar, whose whereabouts remain a mystery, was in the cave complex.

Saif Fazaldeen Agha, a senior government official in Spin Boldak just south of Adi Ghar Mountain where the battle took place, told Reuters that a senior Hezb-e-Islami commander called Abdul Ghani had been detained by US forces.

He said that other people arrested in the operation had expertise in bomb making and mine laying and that an advanced communications system had been found in the cave complex.

Afghan officials say the Taleban were trying to regroup in southern and eastern Afghanistan, and there have been regular small-scale attacks on US and government positions recently.

An Afghan security official in Spin Boldak said yesterday that Afghan troops returning from the mountains had found "secret documents" and lists of hundreds of names including people from Pakistani towns Pishin and Kutchlak, near the Afghan border. (R)