U.S. special forces take seven people into custody; find large weapons cache

The Associated Press

BAGRAM, Afghanistan (AP) - U.S. special forces detained seven people and seized truckloads of weapons, including rockets and an anti-aircraft gun, during an operation in southeastern Afghanistan, a military spokesman said yesterday.

About a dozen soldiers searching a compound near the village of Orgun on Wednesday found a stash of literature calling for holy war against American and coalition forces and documents indicating there was a weapons cache in a nearby building, said Col. Roger King at Bagram Air Base, the U.S. military headquarters in Afghanistan.

Inside the building, the soldiers found about 18,000 rounds of machine gun ammunition, rockets, an anti-aircraft gun, rocket-propelled grenades and launchers, mortar rounds and anti-tank mines, King said.

He said three trucks were needed to ship the ammunition back to the U.S. base in Orgun, a village about 110 miles south of the capital, Kabul. The age of the weapons ranged from new to a World War II-era German anti-tank weapon.

"Three truckloads of ammunition and weapons is a relatively significant haul, and now they're off the market," King said. The anti-aircraft gun was "of particular significance in that we do a lot of movement by air," he said.