The Associated Press
Afghan children look out of their tent Sunday in a refugee camp outside Pol-e Khomri in northeastern Afghanistan.

U.S. escalates air campaign in Afghanistan

Bombing of caves in eastern area heaviest in weeks

PAULINE JELINEK, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON -- U.S. warplanes struck again near the eastern Afghanistan village of Zawar, at the site of a huge complex of caves, tunnels and buildings the Pentagon says was used as an underground hide-out by al-Qaida and Taliban members.

After more than a week of strikes, Sunday's bombing appeared to be the heaviest attack since last month's strikes on the al-Qaida cave complex at Tora Bora farther northeast.

The bodies of five Marines killed in an air crash in Pakistan returned to U.S. soil Sunday, and more than two dozen al-Qaida and Taliban prisoners were en route to detention in Cuba.

Military investigators continued to search the crash site in the mountainous area of southwest Pakistan for the last of the seven victims and clues to what caused the crash of the military refueling plane Wednesday.

A plane carrying the remains of five Marines killed in the plane crash arrived shortly before midnight Sunday at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware after a flight from the U.S. Rhein-Main Air Base in Germany.

In the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, 30 prisoners departed for Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, three days after the first group of prisoners was transferred to the high security facility.

Shackled and with white caps covering their faces, they shuffled in the darkness late Sunday, Afghan time, into a C-17 transport plane for the flight to eastern Cuba.

Lights at the U.S. base at the Kandahar airport were shut off except for red low-intensity lights and green chemical lighting. Security was tight, with attack dogs and Humvees with 50-caliber machine guns patrolling the area.

The first group of 20 detainees left Thursday and arrived in Guantanamo Bay the next day.

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