US forces dig a hole, strike Afghan weapons
( 2002-10-24 16:12 ) (7 )

US special forces did not have to go far to find their latest weapons cache in southern Afghanistan.

They were just a few metres from their front door near the town of Deh Rawud on Tuesday, digging a hole for a pull-up bar for physical training, when they hit a buried pipe.

A little more excavation revealed a hidden cache of five AK-47 rifles, 11 AKM rifles, 7,500 rounds of ammunition, a rocket-launcher and 16 rockets, US military spokesman Colonel Roger King said.

"They believed it was there before they moved in because there was no (freshly) disturbed ground," King told reporters on Thursday at Bagram air base, north of the capital Kabul.

US forces are in Afghanistan searching for remnants of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network and the Taliban regime that sheltered them. While they have had limited success in tracking down their enemy in recent months, they continue to turn up hidden caches of weapons at regular intervals.