October 26, 2001	Friday	Shaba'an 8, 1422

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KABUL/PESHAWAR, Oct 25: US warplanes hit a crowded bus and worshippers leaving a mosque in their latest attacks to capture Osama bin Laden, the ruling Taliban said on Thursday.

After darkness fell across Kabul, jets roared overhead, releasing their bombs in a string of huge explosions that shook the city, one witness said.

“The explosions came in a single sequence along with the roar of the planes. They just came boom, boom, boom. It was huge,” the witness said. “There was almost no sign of anti-aircraft fire from the Taliban.”

The explosions were among the largest for several nights, rattling windows and doorframes in the heart of the war-ravaged city. The targets of the bombs and any damage could not be immediately known because a night curfew is in place.

Witnesses said the United States had also attacked suspected hideouts of Osama bin Laden.

Concern grew over the mounting civilian casualties as the world’s sole superpower unleashed its sophisticated armoury against rifle-carrying soldiers dug into World War One-style trenches for a 19th day.

The Taliban, although heavily outgunned, have proved more resilient than expected in the face of the US onslaught and Northern Alliance hopes they would be able to sweep across the dusty plains to Kabul have evaporated.

In Kabul, the information ministry said US planes had hit a bus station in the southern town of Kandahar.

“In Kandahar at a bus station, a bus full of passengers was hit and an unknown number of people were either killed or wounded,” spokesman Abdul Hanan Himat said.

Local residents fleeing the strikes into Pakistan said it felt as if the jets were targeting any moving vehicle.

“The US planes were hitting all moving things, including trucks and buses,” said medical student Sultan Mohammad, 25. The bus appeared to have been hit near Kandahar’s Kabul Gate.

Taliban officials said eight nomads were killed and 25 wounded in another part of the city, the stronghold of Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.

HERAT: Western planes also bombed the village of Ishaq Sulaiman, near Herat, killing 20 civilians and injuring eight as they emerged from prayers, the Taliban spokesman said.

“Eight or nine bombs hit the vicinity of the mosque and maybe the mosque itself was martyred (destroyed),” he said.

Witnesses said aircraft struck hideouts believed to be used by Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network in the eastern Paktia province bordering Pakistan.

“We have been hearing the roar of US planes and bombing of Gora Tangi area for the past four days,” a witness in the Kurram tribal area said.

Two US planes struck the Gora Tangi area in Paktia province on Wednesday evening.

Osama is believed to have built a maze of tunnels in the Gora Tangi area during the US-backed war of resistance against the Soviet occupation in the 1980s.

In northwestern Afghanistan, opposition forces said they planned to cut Taliban supplies with Kabul and take the town of Mazar-i-Sharif, which has an airbase that US forces could use.

“We have a plan to take the main road between Kabul and Mazar-i-Sharif which passes through Bamiyan and Baglan provinces, general Ustad Attah said.

“God willing, we will have victory in Mazar soon,” he added.

The opposition foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah, however, was cautious.

“It will be a few more days before we talk about the city itself,” he told reporters.—Reuters