U.S. Begins First Airlift of Prisoners WASHINGTON, Jan. 10 - A C-17 Globemaster cargo plane carrying 20 heavily guarded Taliban and Al Qaeda prisoners left a Marine Corps base in southern Afghanistan today on its way to the United States naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the first wave of hundreds of detainees who will be held there. The Pentagon provided few details about the flight, but senior military officials said more than 40 specially trained military police officers guarded the prisoners on the flight, which was expected to make one stop before reaching Cuba, possibly as early as Friday morning. The prisoners, their hands and feet shackled and their heads covered by hoods, were loaded single file onto the plane at Kandahar Airport. Pentagon officials said some prisoners might also be sedated during the more-than-20-hour flight, but it was not clear whether that had happened. A Pentagon official said earlier this week that the United States did not consider the detainees prisoners of war, but that they were still being afforded the protections under the Geneva Convention guidelines. At Guantanamo Bay, the prisoners will be taken to a makeshift detention center known as Camp X- Ray, where they will be locked in 6- by-8-foot cages made of concrete and chain-link fence to await intensive interrogation and, possibly, trial before military tribunals. As workers prepared the camp in Cuba for as many as 2,000 prisoners, search crews in Pakistan continued to comb the wreckage of a Marine Corps tanker plane that crashed on Wednesday in southwestern Pakistan. Seven marines died in the fiery accident. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said today that there was no evidence that the crash had been caused by hostile fire. Pentagon officials also said today that the United States was preparing to send a force of more than 100 soldiers, many of them Special Operations forces, to the Philippines to help train Filipino troops to fight Muslim militants from the Abu Sayyaf group. Though the American forces are expected to be involved initially in advising and training Filipino counterterrorist units, senior American military officials have said they could become involved in direct military action if the Philippine government requested it. Amnesty International issued a statement today saying that sedating prisoners or shackling them for an entire flight would violate international standards prohibiting "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment. Mr. Rumsfeld said today that he did not know how the prisoners would be restrained during the flight. But he defended the use of strong measures, saying the Pentagon had closely studied violent uprisings by Taliban and Al Qaeda prisoners held in the northern Afghan city of Mazar- i-Sharif and in Pakistan. About 20 minutes after the C-17 lifted off from the base at Kandahar Airport, marines came under small- arms fire near one of the runways. No one was injured and the identify of the snipers remained unknown tonight, military officials said. Military officials also said John Walker Lindh, the American who was captured with Taliban forces near Mazar-i-Sharif, was not among the prisoners transferred today. Mr. Walker is still being held aboard the assault ship Bataan in the Arabian Sea, the officials said. American forces in Afghanistan were holding a total of 371 prisoners today, including 351 at Kandahar and 19 at Bagram air base north of Kabul. But the number keeps rising as American military and intelligence officials continue interviewing thousands of prisoners held by anti-Taliban militias. Camp X-Ray has cells for about 100 detainees, and will soon be expanded to hold 220. During the next few months, military work crews will build permanent facilities for as many as 2,000 prisoners. Mr. Rumsfeld declined to discuss details about the growing American involvement in the Philippines, where Abu Sayyaf guerrillas have been battling government troops in the southern island of Basilan. The rebels, who have been linked to Al Qaeda in the past, are holding two American hostages for ransom. But earlier this week, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz said that American Special Operations forces might become involved in "direct support of Philippine military operations," though he added that the government seemed "anxious" to do the job itself. "There's no question that we believe that if they could clear the Abu Sayyaf group out of Basilan Island, that would be a small blow against the extended Al Qaeda network," Mr. Wolfowitz said. In November, President Bush promised to give the Philippines a $100 million antiterrorism aid package that would include weapons, training and shared intelligence. Since then, the United States has sent an array of equipment to the Philippine military, including a C-130 cargo plane, 30,000 M-16 rifles and 8 UH- 1 Huey helicopters. In eastern Afghanistan, American B-1 and B-52 bombers dropped precision-guided weapons on the sprawling Al Qaeda training camp at Zhawar Kili near the Pakistan border today for the sixth time in just over a week. Senior military officials have said they are increasingly concerned that there are other equally sophisticated and well-fortified underground complexes elsewhere in Afghanistan that could become guerrilla bases for remnants of the Taliban and Al Qaeda forces. At the Pentagon, Mr. Bush signed a $318 billion military spending bill today for the 2002 fiscal year. "Today more than ever we also owe those in uniform the resources they need to maintain a very high state of readiness," Mr. Bush said. "Our enemies rely upon surprise and deception. They used to rely upon the fact that they thought we were soft. I don't think they think that way anymore." Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company