November 10, 2001	Saturday	Shaba’an 23, 1422

KABUL, Nov 9: US planes bombing the main highway out of Mazar-i-Sharif destroyed two buses, killing all the passengers, the Taliban militia said on Friday.

A militia spokesman, who also reported more than 20 other deaths from US bombing raids in the country, said traffic on the Hajigak highway had become a regular target for US warplanes.

The highway, heading south from the strategic northern city, has become the main route to the Afghan capital since the old Mazar-Kabul road through the Hindu Kush mountains was closed by the civil war several years ago.

Abdul Henan Hemat, chief of the Taliban’s Bakhter information agency in Kabul, said the militia suspected US jets were attacking vehicles on the road because they believed it was being used to get Taliban reinforcements to Mazar-i-Sharif.

Hemat said that on Wednesday a US fighter destroyed two buses as they went through the Bamiyan province section of the Hajigak. He said all the passengers were killed.

Hemat added that four other civilian cars were hit by bombs on the road on Thursday.

“Every day American planes are bombing this road thinking it is being used to send reinforcements. Every day they are hitting buses, cars and tractors but these are civilians,” said Hemat.

The Taliban spokesman also reported 22 more civilian casualties from US bombing raids overnight on Afghan cities and other frontlines.

He said 12 people were killed and 19 injured in raids on the Khakriz and Daman districts of Kandahar, the Taliban bastion in southern Afghanistan.

North of Kabul, the village of Qala-i-Nasro in Qaradagh district was hit, leaving six civilians dead and an unknown number injured. In Istalif, four civilians were killed and seven injured, he said.

US bombers have pounded Taliban lines north of Kabul and around the Bagram airbase as they step up pressure on the militia.

ICRC CHIEF: The newly-elected president of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies added his voice on Thursday to the criticism of humanitarian aid airdrops into Afghanistan.

“From a strictly technical point of view, it seems that other forms of aid are more appropriate,” said Juan Manuel Suarez del Toro, after being elected for a four-year term to head the umbrella organisation for the world’s 178 national Red Cross and Red Crescent societies.

“I would prefer the idea of humanitarian aid corridors through which aid could be distributed directly to the people.

“These drops (of aid) are not always as effective as they’re made out to be,” he said.

Humanitarian groups have criticized the US for combining food drops with the bombing campaign against Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban regime and suspected terrorist targets linked to the September 11 attacks on the United States.

Suarez del Toro also set out some of his aims for the organisation during his term of office.

He said he wanted to “reinforce the Federation’s presence on the international stage” and to delegate its current operational role “little by little” towards its 178 national societies while maintaining an overall coordinating role.

Suarez del Toro was elected by 109 votes of 170 cast at the Federation’s general assembly, edging out the previous incumbent, Astrid Heiberg.

He told the meeting: “I began my Red Cross adventure many years ago and it means a great deal to me that a volunteer can end up as president of the Federation.”

Suarez del Toro, 49, had headed the Spanish Red Cross since 1994. —AFP