WASHINGTON - Military searchers found the bodies of five of the seven U.S. Marines killed in a plane crash in Pakistan and intensified efforts to determine the cause of the deadliest incident in America's war in Afghanistan. <br>
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The bodies should arrive on a flight to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware on Sunday or Monday, said Maj. Brad Lowell, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command headquarters in Tampa, Fla. <br>
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Investigators were at the crash site looking for remains of the other two Marines and more clues into the cause of Wednesday's crash, Lowell said Saturday.<br>
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Marines at a U.S. base in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar paused Saturday to remember the crash victims. About 100 Marines gathered for a memorial service in a bullet-pocked airport terminal, their rocket launchers and M-16 assault rifles pointed at the floor as they sang ``Amazing Grace.'' <br>
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The deaths will ``strengthen our resolve to do everything we can to eradicate terrorism in the world,'' said Cmdr. Joseph Scordo, a Marine chaplain. <br>
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The Marine KC-130 fuel tanker slammed into a mountainside and exploded Wednesday while approaching an air base at Shamsi, in southwestern Pakistan. Although U.S. forces in Pakistan have occasionally faced gunfire and other hostile actions, Defense Department officials say they have no evidence hostile fire brought down the plane. <br>
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Witnesses said the four-engine plane circled the remote airfield twice before crashing into the steep mountainside.<br>
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It was making the first of four scheduled stops on a flight to refuel other aircraft, so it was heavily laden with fuel. Fully loaded, the plane could carry more than 10,000 gallons. <br>
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Military officials also have said they have no indication that bad weather caused the crash, which caused an explosion that was seen and heard in a Pakistani town 20 miles away. <br>
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The Marine Corps has been using the KC-130 since 1962 for in-flight refueling of helicopters and carrying cargo. <br>
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On Friday U.S. warplanes struck a huge al-Qaida training complex in eastern Afghanistan, acting on evidence that more members of the terrorist network had arrived there, Lowell said.<br>
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The airstrikes hit buildings and caves in the Zawar Kili area, several mountainous square miles near the Afghan city of Khost, near the Pakistan border. American B-52, F/A-18 and B-1B planes dropped bombs on the area, Lowell said. <br>
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A U.S. AC-130 gunship also joined the attacks, Lowell said. Those low-flying planes use rapid-fire cannons and mortars and are often deployed against vehicles and buildings the military believes contain enemy forces. <br>
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``We do have information that the training camp had been reoccupied by members of al-Qaida,'' Lowell said. <br>
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Defense Department officials had said Friday they believed al-Qaida had abandoned Zawar Kili after days of repeated U.S. airstrikes. <br>
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``To my knowledge, there are no longer al-Qaida present in that specified area,'' Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Richard Myers told a Pentagon news briefing Friday. <br>
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U.S. forces also released one prisoner in Afghanistan after determining he ``was of no value,'' Lowell said. The man was set free and not turned over to Afghan or other authorities, Lowell said. <br>
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That brought the number of detainees in U.S. custody in or near Afghanistan to 444. Most of them, 391, were at the U.S. base in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar. Another 52 were being held at the air base in Bagram, north of Kabul, the capital. <br>
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John Walker Lindh, the American captured while fighting with the Taliban in Afghanistan, remained imprisoned aboard the USS Bataan in the Arabian Sea. <br>
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Twenty more al-Qaida and Taliban prisoners are incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay Naval Station in Cuba.
