Army spokeswoman . `` The targets were carefully chosen to pinpoint enemy positions and eliminate the likelihood of harming innocent civilians , '' she said . `` This region has provided an ideal environment to conceal enemy support bases and training sites , as well as plan and launch attacks aimed at terrorizing innocent civilians , both inside and outside the region . '' Also Wednesday , a manager at a private British security firm in Afghanistan was shot and killed in the capital Kabul , a spokesman for the company said . `` We did lose a manager today in Kabul to unknown assailants , '' Christopher Beese , spokesman for ArmorGroup International , said Wednesday . He said next of kin have been notified and an inquiry into the incident has begun . The name of the man , a British national , was not released . `` It 's bad news . He was a very well-respected man , '' Beese said , noting that the victim had experience in Afghanistan going back to the early 1980s . Beese -- who said the man 's role was to run the administration of the 1,200-person-strong security presence in
-LRB- CNN -RRB- -- Hundreds of U.S. and Afghan soldiers have embarked on a major operation against militants in the eastern Afghan region of Tora Bora , near the border with Pakistan , officials have told CNN . File photo of the remote mountain Tora Bora region on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan . Air and ground strikes under way in the remote mountain region are aimed at large numbers of militant fighters . The troops are targeting `` hundreds of hardened al Qaeda and Taliban in dug-in positions , '' said officials familiar with the intelligence . The operation started two days ago in the region , where al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was once thought to be hiding . The Bush administration has been criticized for not sending enough ground forces to Tora Bora in December 2001 to capture the militant after the invasion that toppled the Taliban . `` U.S. and Afghan forces engaged al Qaeda and other violent extremist fighters in eastern Afghanistan during a combined arms assault using precision munitions . There have been no substantiated reports of civilian casualties in this engagement , '' said Capt. Vanessa R. Bowman , a U.S.