WASHINGTON — The CIA officer who led the first American unit into Afghanistan after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks said yesterday that his orders included an unusual assignment: bring back Osama bin Laden's head on ice.

Gary Schroen and his six-member CIA team arrived in Afghanistan's Panjshir Valley two weeks after the attacks.

A 32-year CIA veteran with long experience in South Asia and the Middle East, Schroen's prime task was to build up Northern Alliance forces so they could join U.S. troops in the overthrow of the Taliban harboring bin Laden. Schroen said his boss at the CIA, Cofer Black, who was then the director of the CIA's counterterrorist center, also told him and his deputy in no uncertain terms to kill the al-Qaida leadership.

"What he said (was), 'I would like to see the head of bin Laden delivered back to me in a heavy cardboard box filled with dry ice, and I will take that down and show the president. And the rest of the lieutenants, you can put their heads on pikes,' " Schroen told Reuters in an interview.

"I don't think he meant that in detail. ... I think he meant to impress upon me and my deputy that this was very serious business and he wanted to get our adrenaline charged," Schroen added.

Black was not immediately available for comment.

Schroen recounts his post-Sept. 11 Afghan experience in the book, "First In: An Insider's Account of How the CIA Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan," which will be published next week.

Bin Laden's trail grew cold after the Bush administration withdrew its most highly trained special operations and intelligence units from Afghanistan in preparation for the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, Schroen said.

20 rebels killed in fierce Afghan attack

KABUL, Afghanistan — U.S. troops and Afghan police killed about 20 rebels and captured six during a battle in the mountains of southern Afghanistan, U.S. officials said yesterday, the latest in a string of clashes in an insurgent hotbed near the Pakistani border.

Six soldiers and five policemen were reported wounded in several hours of fighting Tuesday. The battle, the deadliest in nearly seven months, occurred in the Dehchopan district of Zabul province, about 205 miles southwest of the capital, Kabul, a military statement said.

Zabul is in Afghan territory along the border with Pakistan where Taliban loyalists have stepped up their insurgency against the government of U.S.-backed President Hamid Karzai after a winter lull. Bombings and gunbattles have killed dozens of rebels and Afghan police and soldiers as well as several civilians, an U.S. soldier and a Romanian soldier.

The U.S. statement said the American soldiers wounded Tuesday were in stable condition, and four would be flown to a U.S. military hospital in Germany. The other two returned to duty.

The military said the firefight began when gunmen attacked U.S. soldiers and Afghan police who were investigating a reported beating of an Afghan man.

Tuesday's battle coincided with the installation of a new American commander for the 18,000-soldier coalition force.

Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry said he would maintain the approach of bolstering Afghanistan's government while pursuing militants and their leaders, including Osama bin Laden and Taliban chief Mullah Omar.

Terror allegations tearfully denied

MADRID, Spain — An accused Islamic militant who says he is simply a martial arts and physical education instructor burst into tears yesterday as he denied belonging to a terrorist cell that allegedly helped plot the Sept. 11 attacks.

Abdulla Khayata Katan, 29, also claimed that Spain's top counterterrorism judge browbeat him into making false statements about fellow defendants.

Katan said guards at a Jordanian jail humiliated and abused him during a three-day interrogation in February 2004.

Judge Baltasar Garzon, an investigative magistrate, then pressured him into falsely incriminating the accused terror-cell leader, Imad Yarkas, and others, Katan said.

"I am completely innocent," he said. "I have nothing to do with what they accuse me of."

Katan is one of 24 suspected al-Qaida members on trial in Madrid since April 22. Three are accused specifically of helping plot the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States.

Hours of the taped testimony were played in court yesterday. But as the tape played, Katan accused Garzon of putting words in his mouth to suggest Yarkas recruited men for terrorist training in Bosnia and Afghanistan.

In testimony last week, Yarkas denied charges he helped arrange a July 2001 planning session in Spain for a suspected suicide pilot and an alleged coordinator of the airline attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The other 21 defendants, including Katan, face charges of terrorism, illegal possession of weapons or explosives or other offenses. Katan is not accused of having direct involvement in the Sept. 11 plot.