A January 24 raid by U.S. Special Forces on a Taliban compound at Hazar Kadam, Afghanistan yielded not only new detainees to be questioned, but also a large munitions cache, a Pentagon official said.

U.S. Special Forces who captured 27 Taliban forces in the raid also found more than 400 60-millimeter mortar rounds, over 300 rocket-propelled grenades, 300 100-millimeter rockets, thousands of rocket fuses, more than 250 automatic grenade launcher rounds and more than 500,000 small arms rounds, Rear Admiral John Stufflebeem said at a Pentagon briefing January 25.

An AC-130 gunship was subsequently called in to destroy the munitions, with a result of significant secondary explosions, Stufflebeem added.

Stufflebeem noted that elsewhere in the region, an unmanned Predator surveillance aircraft crashed while attempting to land January 24. The cause of the crash was being investigated, he said, but no hostile fire was involved.

The number of detainees held in Afghanistan has increased by five, from 297 to 302, Stufflebeem said. The five had been turned over to U.S. forces by the Afghans within the previous 24 hours, he noted.