CBS) CBS National Security Correspondent David Martin has learned that an unmanned drone operated by the CIA fired a missile at what was believed to be a group of senior al Qaeda leaders meeting in the mountains of southeastern Afghanistan.
The strike occurred Monday night near the cave complex known as Zawar Khili and so far intelligence officials have not been able to confirm the identities of any of the al Qaeda leaders.
Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants are believed to have been hiding at Zawar Khili since escaping the bombing of Tora Bora two months ago.
In previous raids, U.S. special operations forces have found large caches of weapons and documents at Zawar Khili.
As one senior official described the attack, SUVs protected by armed guards pulled up, three men in white robes got out, and, the official said, "we killed them" with a missile fired from the CIA drone.
"At least one was killed and possibly others. It's not clear who the individual was," a U.S. official said.
The al Qaeda leader who was killed in the attack was taller than the handful of others surrounding him, leading to some speculation about whether the United States may have hit bin Laden.
Bin Laden, whose height is estimated on the FBI's most wanted terrorist list to be 6 feet 4 inches to 6 feet 6 inches , is blamed by the United States for the Sept. 11 attacks on America that killed about 3,000 people.
But another U.S. official said several al Qaeda leaders were tall, including Ayman al-Zawahri, bin Laden's top lieutenant.
U.S. officials believe it was an al Qaeda leader because of the manner in which the others around him were paying homage. "You can tell from overhead that one guy's the center of attention," the official said.
"The central figure had a close encounter of the worst kind with a Hellfire missile," he said. But the official stressed that the identity of the dead man was not yet known and there were no other indicators in the aftermath of the missile attack to suggest bin Laden had been killed.
Since Monday's raid, the Pentagon has been trying to put a commando team on the ground to identify the bodies but bad weather has made it too dangerous to fly a helicopter in the mountainous terrain.
Meanwhile, American authorities in Afghanistan have released 27 people taken prisoner during a raid last month on what U.S. forces mistook as a hide-out for al Qaeda terrorists.
An investigation by U.S. Central Command is trying to determine whether some or all of the estimated 19 people killed also were innocents, Maj. Ralph Mills, a spokesman for the command, said Wednesday.
After two weeks of confusion and conflicting accounts of what happened in the Jan. 23 raid, the Pentagon made no official announcement Wednesday. Asked about it by reporters during an appearance on Capitol Hill, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said he did not know the 27 had been released.
It's a very complicated situation on the ground" in Afghanistan, Rumsfeld said, especially as the new government works to overcome feudal divisions within the country and empower people once loyal to the routed Taliban rulers. "So how anyone would identify people at any given moment is not simple," he said. "It's complex."
The episode underscores the difficulty U.S. and allied troops face in hunting down remnants of al Qaeda and Taliban fighters at a time when the Afghan government is trying to overcome tribal divisions.
U.S. forces in Afghanistan were preparing to take possession of as many as 60 more Taliban and al Qaeda prisoners held by Afghan forces, a senior U.S. defense official said. The number of prisoners in U.S. custody in Afghanistan has stood at 324 for more than a week; there also are 158 al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners held at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
It was not clear Wednesday whether any of the additional 60 prisoners to be turned over later this week in Afghanistan were senior figures in either al Qaeda or the Taliban militia that supported it. Officials said it was possible that U.S. officials would not accept all the prisoners offered.
The transfer of al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners from Afghanistan to Guantanamo Bay resumed Wednesday with an Air Force C-17 transport plane taking off from Kandahar, Afghanistan. It was due to arrive in Cuba on Thursday.
At the Pentagon, a senior defense official said about 30 prisoners were aboard the C-17, the first flight in a planned series of about five to Guantanamo Bay over the next 10 days to two weeks.
After a series of flights between Jan. 11 and 21, Rumsfeld halted the process while more temporary cells were built. A new group of 160 cells is now ready to receive prisoners, officials said Wednesday.
The 27 captured in the Jan. 23 raid by Army special forces were released to authorities of the Afghan interim government at about 6:30 a.m. EST Wednesday, Central Command spokesman Mills said.
"We were able to determine that they were not Taliban forces and they were not affiliated with al Qaeda," Mills said.
Asked to confirm Afghan claims that two were local police officials, he said: "We do believe that some of them were criminals, (so) we decided we will not release names or other identifying information."
Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of the war, ordered an investigation last week in response to assertions by Afghan government officials that people opposed to the Taliban were among those killed or captured.
"In a related matter, The Washington Post quoted the interim leader of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, as saying U.S. forces have admitted to him that they mistakenly killed innocent people a day before his inauguration when U.S. jets destroyed a convoy of trucks near the city of Khost in Paktia province, also on the belief it included Taliban and al Qaeda leaders.
Up to 65 people reportedly were killed.
Karzai said U.S. forces were purposely misled into believing the convoy included Taliban officials. Americans have said from the outset that rivalries between ethnic groups and local warlords have made more difficult the campaign to get bin Laden, his al Qaeda network and the Taliban rulers who harbored them.
At the country's opposite extreme, far to the east in Gardez, there was little sign of progress in efforts to resolve a power struggle between clans from the majority Pashtun ethnic group.
The recently appointed governor of Paktia, Padshah Khan Zadran, was driven out of his capital, Gardez, 70 miles south of Kabul, late last week after two days of clashes with forces of a rival who says he is the rightful governor.
The clashes cost the lives of around 50 fighters, and Zadran's forces have threatened to launch a counter-attack to try to recapture Gardez if he is not returned to power.
A team of government mediators traveled to Gardez on the weekend but failed to push the two sides into a peace pact, although they did get them to agree to a brief ceasefire and to swap prisoners from last week's fighting.
The fighting erupted when Zadran's forces tried to disarm some of Saifullah's troops. Karzai on Tuesday blamed Zadran for sparking the conflict with the heavy-handed tactics of his troops, but played down the significance of the clashes for his government, especially given the country's long history of war.
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