Investigators search for clues to Marine plane crash; hunt for bodies continues

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Posted 10:01AM on Friday, January 11, 2002

WASHINGTON - Military troops scoured the remote landscape of southwestern Pakistan Friday for the bodies of seven U.S. Marines killed in the crash of their tanker plane. Investigators tried to determine what sent the aircraft into a mountain. A Pakistani official at the Shamsi base near the bleak town of Washki, speaking on condition of anonymity, said some body parts had been found near where the KC-130 exploded Wednesday night. The crash produced the largest U.S. casualty toll of the anti-terror war. Meantime, in Afghanistan, a firefight erupted Thursday as a plane carrying 20 war detainees left the southern city of Kandahar bound for a U.S. Navy base in Cuba. And in the Philippines, American troops were on the ground preparing for an expansion of a counterterrorism training program for that country's armed forces. An investigative and recovery team arrived Thursday at the site of the plane crash, about 180 miles southwest of the Pakistani border city of Quetta. Four U.S. helicopters hovered over the rugged terrain while Marines and Pakistani troops on the ground used sophisticated equipment to search for charred body parts, witnesses and officials said. Two small pilotless planes, presumably U.S., also were seen in the area. No bodies had been reported found by Thursday night, said Navy Cmdr. Dan Keesee, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Fla. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said no indication has been found that enemy fire caused the crash. He praised the seven victims at a joint appearance Thursday with Australia's defense minister. "Their deaths, along with that of the U.S. Special Forces soldier last week, underscore the fact that the mission in Afghanistan remains difficult and remains dangerous," Rumsfeld said. Another reminder of the danger came Thursday as the United States began transferring detainees from Afghanistan to the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. A C-17 cargo plane left the American base at the Kandahar airport with 20 suspected al-Qaida prisoners, bound and wearing masks and goggles. As the plane took off, unknown gunmen began firing near the edge of the base, and Marines responded with heavy fire, said a base spokesman, Marine Lt. James Jarvis. He said he knew of no American casualties in the firefight. The prisoners, suspected members of the al-Qaida terror network, were being flown to the heavily guarded Caribbean base for further questioning and possible trials by military tribunals. U.S. forces were holding 331 other prisoners at Kandahar and another 19 at the air base in Bagram, north of Afghanistan's capital, Kabul. As many as nine prisoners had been held on the amphibious assault ship USS Bataan in the Arabian Sea, but on Thursday only one remained -- American Taliban John Walker Lindh. The United States also was no longer holding prisoners in the northern Afghan city Mazar-e-Sharif. Far to the southeast, in the Philippines, some two dozen U.S. special forces troops were planning logistics and security for a larger force that could arrive within a week, a defense official said on condition of anonymity. In Manila, Philippine armed forces spokesman Brig. Gen. Edilberto Adan said this week that small groups of American soldiers, eventually totaling more than 100, soon would start arriving. "We all know that the Philippine government has been very seriously attempting to deal with terrorists on one or two islands," Rumsfeld said, referring to the Abu Sayyaf extremist group linked with al-Qaida. ------