U.S. Awaiting Results of Airstrike

Feb. 7, 2002 -- U.S. forces are waiting for bad weather in southeastern Afghanistan to clear so they can verify the effects of a Monday strike on suspected al Qaeda leaders.

Two Hellfire missiles were launched from a CIA-operated unmanned drone aircraft at a group of men in Zawar Khili, an area that has been strongly pro-Taliban and once included a terrorist training complex that was heavily bombed in early January.

The men have not been officially identified, but since one of them was tall, there is speculation the 6-foot-4-inch Osama bin Laden or his right-hand man, Egyptian citizen Ayman al-Zawahiri, might have been among those killed.

U.S. war commander Gen. Tommy Franks told ABCNEWS today he believed the identities of the dead would be "interesting," but added he had not seen any indications that bin Laden was among the victims.

The Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press identified the three people killed in the attack as civilians. Citing tribal elders in the region, AIP identified the men as Munir Ahmad, Jehangir Khan and Daraz Khan.

But the Pentagon is confident that they were senior al Qaeda members, U.S. sources said.

The attacks were made after the Predator drone had been tracking a convoy of a half-dozen sport utility vehicles in an area where none had been spotted for weeks.

The convoy size, types of vehicles and the way they hung together on the mountain roads were also typical of al Qaeda, sources said. The decision to strike was further reinforced when the convoy stopped, and nearly 20 heavily armed security people got out, along with three men dressed in Arab-style white robes.

The three stood apart from the others in conversation, and at that moment, U.S. commanders, hundreds of miles away, decided to strike.

In eastern Afghanistan, Wazir Khan, a brother of regional warlord Bacha Khan, told The Associated Press seven people were killed in the attack, but that bin Laden "is not among those people."

Manned warplanes were not used because none were in the area, U.S. sources told ABCNEWS.

Applying the Geneva Convention

Meanwhile, the White House today announced that the Geneva Convention would apply to Talibansoldiers, but not al Qaeda fighters and other terrorists.

Speaking at a press briefing in Washington, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said, "Al Qaeda is an international terrorist group and cannot be considered a state party to the Geneva Convention."

But Fleischer maintained that the new decision would not change the way the two groups of detainees are currently being treated.

"It will not change their material life on a day-to-day basis," he said. "They will continue to be treated well, because that's what the United States does."

The announcement came as U.S. officials said troops had finished building 320 new holdingcells in Camp X-Ray at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba. A planeload of 28 detainees from Kandahar, the United States' major base in Afghanistan, also arrived at Guantanamo Bay today.

Rescue Efforts at Avalanche Site

In the Afghan capital of Kabul today, a 21-member commission met for the first time to convene a loya jirga, or assembly of leaders.

The meeting was convened as rescue teams in the north struggled to reach an estimated 100 people feared trapped when an avalanche struck a humanitarian aid convoy at the Salang Tunnel on Wednesday.

At least three people were killed, a U.N. spokesman told ABCNEWS, and the death toll is expected to rise as bad weather hampers rescue efforts.

The severe Afghan winter has led to growing concerns that much needed food supplies would not reach some of the remote parts of Afghanistan where thousands of Afghans face starvation.

Bin Laden Relative: Loose Change, Not Millions

In other developments:

Disputing reports that bin Laden had inherited millions of dollars from his father's business, a relative of the terror mastermind told a French weekly the inheritance was never divided, although bin Laden family members did get some cash. The relative, Yesama Binladin, who spells his name differently, told Le Point that bin Laden may have been funded by governments.

Afghanistan's interim leader Hamid Karzai is scheduled to visit Pakistan on Friday, the Pakistani Foreign Ministry announced today. Pakistan was a major backer of the Taliban regime but switched its support after the Sept. 11 attacks.

ABCNEWS' John McWethy and Brian Hartman at the Pentagon contributed to this report.