KHOWRI KHORAH, Afghanistan (AP) - After a grueling hike over craggy terrain, Sgt. 1st Class Craig Ogden crawled through a 3-foot-high opening to a goat pen tucked into a cliff, searching for a massive weapons cache.

Behind a stack of stones at the rear of the pen, the company of soldiers finds hundreds of mortar and recoilless rifle rounds, rockets and more than 120 cases of ammunition - many labeled in Chinese.

The discovery is the 60-man company's prize for months of intelligence work. It also is the first big success for Operation Desert Lion, an intensified hunt for weapons stashed by remnants of al-Qaida or the ousted Taliban regime for use against a U.S.-led coalition battling terrorists in Afghanistan.

''Whoever put this here cleverly disguised this cave as an animal pen,'' said Ogden, of San Antonio, with not a bead of sweat on his head despite the arduous climb.

''It's good to get this stuff off the market. This is what they've been firing at us.''

The cache was one of the largest found in Afghanistan, Ogden said Thursday.

The operation in the Kohe Safi mountains east of Kabul was one of the first to combine intelligence collected by the International Security Assistance Force, which maintains security in the capital of Kabul, and the U.S.-led multinational anti-terror coalition.

The location of the cache was strategic. The village of Khowri Khowrah is only 12 miles east of Kabul and sits on high ground overlooking the capital. Mujahedeen fighters staged raids on Soviet positions from here in a decade-long war in the 1980s.

After more than two decades of conflict, weapons are as common as wrenching poverty in these Afghan mountains. Army officials are not sure who stuffed the weaponry - some of it old, some new - into the cliff at least a year ago.

But a local source, said to be a former Taliban member, guided the troops. He was not allowed to speak with an Associated Press reporter accompanying the soldiers and wore a baseball cap, sunglasses, scarf and hood tightly wound around his head to protect his identity.

As the operation started Thursday morning, Chinook helicopters disgorged soldiers onto a mountain next to the village. Soldiers quickly set up a security zone, their M-16s ready in case rebel fighters were in the area.

Children in shawls and sandals scurried up and down the mountainsides with stunning speed. Donkeys brayed from a ridge. Entire families bunched up at a doorway of their mud-built home with perplexed gazes as the troops marched by.

Bearded village elders crammed into a shoe-box sized mosque for a meeting with Staff Sgt. Scott Caldwell, a civil affairs specialist, who explained the purpose of the visit and asked about local needs.

Wells for fresh water, roads to nearby towns and a medical clinic, they said.

The arrival of the helicopters reminded residents of the Soviet war and initially sparked fear in the village, a network of muddy alleys, about 100 houses and small, terraced wheat field plots. Many of the men recalled fighting with the mujahedeen against the Soviets.

The Americans are different, they said.

''We are happy they are here,'' a man named Abdul, one of the elders, said through an interpreter. ''They are helping to rebuild our country. The Soviets just wanted to take over.''

The villagers said they knew nothing of big weapons caches. Later, a man named Ibrahim complained that a U.S. soldier had kicked down and broken a padlocked door in his home during a sweep through the village looking for arms.

The cache was several miles from the village. The weapons - containing about 10,000 pounds of explosives altogether - probably were carried in by donkey, Ogden said.

It would be too difficult to salvage them, he determined, so he radioed soldiers to bring him C-4 explosives to blow them up.

Caldwell and a translator explained to a family that their home, located across a parched riverbed from the cache, probably would be damaged by the explosion.

U.S. forces said they would compensate the family for their loss but, from a distance, the wife seemed angry - yelling and stomping around - about being told to leave the area.

The family returned to another home they had in the area, military officials said.

After rigging up the explosives and climbing behind a nearby ridge line, Ogden yelled, ''Fire in the hole!,'' three times.

Then a pause, a flash and a boom. The earth shook and sparks flew over the ridge, visible for miles away.

''It was like the Fourth of July,'' Staff Sgt. Michael Shann, 25, said.