U.S. Sorts Evidence From CIA Strike

U.S. military officials are sorting through "intelligence information" they hope will identify those killed in a CIA missile strike Feb. 4 in eastern Afghanistan, a Pentagon spokesman said Monday.

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Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem, a Pentagon spokesman, said weapons, documents in English and human remains were among the evidence recovered by a military team in the Zawar-Kili region. The team left Zawar-Kili Monday morning.

The documents included credit card receipts and airline scedules, he said.

"It's evidence that suggests these weren't peasant people up there farming," Stufflebeem said, responding to reports that the CIA strike killed innocent Afghans.

The evidence recovered is being flown to an undisclosed site for analysis, including DNA tests, said Victoria Clarke, a Pentagon spokeswoman.

"We collected DNA evidence at the strike scene for identification purposes," Stufflebeem said.

An unknown number of people were killed in the strike by a Hellfire missile fired by a CIA-operated unmanned aerial vehicle, a Predator drone, on a convoy of vehicles that was stopped for a meeting, Stufflebeem said.

U.S. military officials told CNN last week that the men killed were senior al-Qaida leaders, suggested by the presence of a "tall, robed man" treated with great deference.

Stufflebeem said the Pentagon has no indication who the casualties of the strike were, adding only that evidence suggests they were not "innocent locals." He added there is no evidence to support specualtion that Osama bin Laden was among the dead.