Marines attack armoured convoy

US Marine helicopter gunships have attacked an armoured convoy.

The convoy was near the new base the Americans have created in the Afghan desert to press their war on terrorism.

The Cobra gunships destroyed some of the 15 vehicles in the column after it was spotted by "fast-moving aircraft".

US Marine Captain David Romley would not give any details about the location of the convoy or the direction in which it is moving, except to say it was "in the vicinity of this base".

Nor did he identify the "troops" who were attacked by the Marine gunships, but the Americans' new desert base put them within striking distance of Kandahar, home of the Taliban militia that has sheltered Osama bin Laden.

Romley says the column included tanks and BMPs - armoured combat vehicles on treads, mounted with guns and capable of carrying at least a dozen people. They were used by the Soviet army during its decade-long occupation of Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, under a bright moon, US marines, commanded by a British born officer, worked to turn an airstrip in the Afghan desert into a land base as part of Operation Swift Freedom.

Helicopters and transport aircraft brought Marines and equipment from the USS Peleliu in the northern Arabian Sea and from land bases on the coast whose location the military kept secret. The full deployment, to total about 1,000 Marines, is expected to continue at least another day.

According to British born Colonel Peter Miller, chief of staff of the Marine task force in Afghanistan, the sand airstrip and buildings had been built by a wealthy Arab to reach his hunting lodge.

The compound included a small mosque with a minaret and a large white building that may have been a hangar.