October 23, 2001	Tuesday	Shaba'an 5, 1422

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ISLAMABAD, Oct 22: US warplanes bombed Taliban frontlines for a third day on Monday amid mounting pressure to quickly topple the Afghan militia as the deaths of two Washington postal workers sparked a fresh wave of anthrax terror in America.

Afghan opposition sources meanwhile said their troops, accompanied by a team of 20 US special forces, on Monday attacked Taliban positions in northern Afghanistan after US warplanes had softened up the fronts. The claim could not be confirmed

The air strikes and claims of a ground push came as pressure mounted on Washington to end the two-week-old campaign to crush terror bases in Afghanistan and topple the Taliban regime ahead of the holy Ramazan next month.

Afghan opposition spokesman Mohammad Ashraf Nadeem told AFP that opposition fighters had advanced 20 kilometres when they attacked Taliban frontlines following the intense US air raids.

He said a team of 20 US special forces troops was with the opposition “gathering intelligence” during the attack. The opposition said on Sunday that US military advisors were consulting with opposition forces.

But during Monday’s raids, the fighter jets also mistakenly bombed opposition posts, dropping at least two bombs near opposition posts near Bagram airbase situated some 45km north of Kabul.

In Washington, health officials said the sudden deaths Monday of two workers at a postal sorting facility that processes post for the US Congress were being treated as suspicious, adding however that anthrax infection had not been confirmed.

As the fear of bioterrorist reprisals against the United States for its war against terror in Afghanistan mounted, US warplanes blitzed Taliban militia frontlines north of the Afghan capital Kabul and in the northern part of the country, weakening their resistance. “Maybe they have made a mistake,” commented local commander Sayed Mir Shah. “We received two bombs on our side, the others were on the Taliban side.”

US defence officials dismissed Taliban claims that their forces had shot down US helicopters operating in Afghanistan as a “lie’. The militia had earlier claimed their first blood in the conflict, saying they had found the wreckage of a US helicopter with traces of blood and reported fighting with other US forces who came on a rescue mission.

The militia said the latest reported deaths put the total number of civilians killed in the two-week-old raids at more than 1,000. The figures could not be independently confirmed and a Pentagon spokesman said he had no information of a hospital being hit.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, in a move that could clash with a tacit US-Pakistani deal on post-Taliban Afghanistan, said there was no room for the Taliban in a future Afghan administration.—AFP