the Dasht-i-Leili massacre. Some were shot dead when guards shot air holes into the containers. The dead were buried in graves in the Dasht-i-Leili desert just west of Sheberghan, in the Jowzjan Province. Physicians for Human Rights discovered the mass grave in 2002, but the Bush administration discouraged attempts to investigate the incident. Battle of Tora Bora After the fall of Kabul and Kandahar, suspected al-Qaeda members, including bin Laden and other key leaders, withdrew to Jalalabad, Nangarhar Province. From there they moved into the Tora Bora region of the Spin Ghar (White Mountains), 20 km away from the Pakistan border, which had a network of caves and prepared defenses used by the mujahideen during the Soviet–Afghan War. Signal intercepts and interrogation of captured Taliban fighters and al-Qaeda terrorists pointed towards the presence of significant numbers of foreign fighters and possible senior leaders in the area. Instead of committing conventional forces, both the White House and the Pentagon decided to isolate and destroy al-Qaeda elements in the area with the US SOF supporting locally recruited Afghan militias, due to a fear of repeating the Soviet's experience in the area. ODA 572 and a CIA team were dispatched to Tora Bora to advise eastern anti-Taliban militias under the command of two warlords: Hazrat Ali and Mohammed Zaman. Hazrat Ali and Zaman distrusted each other, and during the battle their militias sometimes shot at each other. Using CIA funds, some 1,000 Afghan fighters were recruited for the coming battle. The leader of the CIA team was Gary Berntsen, who in November had replaced Gary Schroen as the senior CIA officer in Afghanistan. On December 2 Berntsen requested a battalion of Rangers be dropped into the mountains to establish blocking positions along potential escape routes out of Tora Bora into Pakistan. In addition to the Rangers, other available forces included 1,000 Marines under Brigadier General Jim Mattis in Kandahar and soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division in Uzbekistan. Franks denied Berntsen's request. From the outset of the battle, ODA 572 with its attached Combat Controller called in precision airstrikes, whilst the Afghans launched a number of poorly executed attacks on established al-Qaeda positions, with limited success. The militias would typically gain ground in the morning following US airstrikes, but relinquish control of those gains the same day. They would also retreat to their base areas to sleep and break their fast each night,