Ryan Chilcote: Hunt for bin Laden's remains

CNN's Ryan Chilcote

BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan (CNN) -- A Canadian-led operation has taken DNA samples from corpses in Afghanistan's Tora Bora region to determine if Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders died during heavy bombing by U.S. forces in December.

CNN Correspondent Ryan Chilcote spoke Tuesday with CNN anchor Carol Costello about the mission, dubbed Operation Torii.

CHILCOTE: I just got back from Operation Torii. Operation Torii was a Canadian-led mission that involved more than 400 coalition troops. And the goal of that mission was nothing less than to perhaps find the remains and identify the remains of Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders.

Now you might be saying, whoa, why Osama bin Laden? Why his remains? Why Tora Bora, and why now?

Well, you might recall that back in December there was some very heavy fighting in the Tora Bora area that involved some very heavy U.S. bombing. The U.S. intelligence community believes that it heard Osama bin Laden on a walkie-talkie in that area. Parts of the U.S. intelligence community believe that is the last time they heard from Osama bin Laden.

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The idea of this mission was that perhaps Osama bin Laden -- if that was the last time they heard from him -- was killed in that bombing. And if he was, perhaps his remains are still there, and they can find them. Because obviously there's nothing more than the coalition against terror would like to do than to find and identify the remains of Osama bin Laden.

COSTELLO: .... So this mission was specifically designed to find Osama bin Laden?

CHILCOTE: Yeah. Specifically, they were looking at a cave complex in the Tora Bora area. And, specifically, one cave that the U.S. military identified as Cave No. 4. Actually, they previously called it Cave No. 3, but it doesn't matter.

... It is now a closed cave -- if there ever was a cave there -- with a waterfall in front of it. Now just to explain, there was a predator spy ship -- a U.S. predator spy ship -- back in December in that area. And it saw a group of what it believes to be 40 to 70 al Qaeda fighters run into what was then there a cave.

It then called in strikes, and a U.S. gunship shelled it, and a B-1 bomber bombed it. So the idea was that with such a large group of al Qaeda fighters, perhaps Osama bin Laden was with them. And these troops wanted to get in that cave and look for remains.

Now as you can see [in a video clip], it's all closed up. And the demolition work you see, the explosive work that you see there, is actually Canadian troops trying to blow their way back into the cave. Now they did not succeed in finding a cave in there and blowing their way into any cave. There was just too much rubble.

What did happen was some villagers from that area came up to them and said, "You know, right after the fighting, we buried 25 Arab fighters in a local graveyard."

Well, that obviously got the interest of the FBI investigator and investigator from the U.S. Army's criminal investigations defense bureau. And they went to that grave site and actually excavated those graves and took DNA samples from the corpses of 23 bodies there.