December 3, 2001	Monday	Ramazan 17, 1422

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KABUL, Dec 2: Dozens of civilians and at least 12 Arab fighters were on Sunday killed in heavy fighting outside Kandahar, as US warplanes backed tribal militias with some of the most intense airstrikes of the campaign.

Anti-Taliban forces of former Kandahar governor Gul Agha, meanwhile, claimed to have battled their way to about three kilometres of the airport but said they had met fierce resistance from pro-Taliban forces.

An aide to Gul Agha said that at least 12 Arabs fighting with the Taliban had been killed in a ferocious firefight with opposition forces at the Urgustan bridge, and their bodies had been left lying where they had fallen, with their weapons.

Another 11 Taliban fighters were wounded in the fighting, the aide, Abdul Jabbar told AFP.

He had, he said, spoken late Sunday by satellite telephone to the former governor, one of two Pakhtoon tribal elders leading the revolt against the Taliban in the south, and that he had reported three Taliban bunkers near the airport destroyed in the US bombardment of Kandahar.

A resident of a village near Kandahar claimed, meanwhile, that 15 people were killed when US warplanes bombed his hamlet, apparently mistaking his aging jeep for a military vehicle.

Mohammed Khan, who arrived at the Pakistani border town of Chaman from Kandahar for treatment to his wounded arms and legs, said that five of his children were killed when the hamlet was attacked on Tuesday.

A neighbour lost four children in the attack, Khan said, adding that his wife had yet to regain consciousness after being struck in the attack.

There has been no independent confirmation of any of the civilian deaths.

Further north near Jalalabad, the Tora Bora cave complex, believed to be a hideout for Osama bin Laden, was bombed again overnight, according to the AIP.

British and US elite special forces troops were reportedly preparing to raid Tora Bora, one of the mountain lairs identified by US officials as a likely Osama stronghold.

More conventional US forces, Task Force 58 of more than 1,000 Marines, sent armoured patrols out from their makeshift base in the desert south of Kandahar, but there had been no troop movements towards the battle zone.

A wire service pool report, however, said the marines backed by British, German and Australian liaison officers, could “potentially” join an attack on Kandahar.

“You have a lot of forces at play,” in any attack on Kandahar, said Major James “Beau” Higgins, an intelligence officer with the US forces.

“The opposition groups coming from the north down, the southeast up and us potentially coming from where we are.”

A group of 40 French troops arrived on Saturday in Mazar-i-Sharif “to secure the airport perimeter during work to repair the runway,” the French defence ministry announced.

They join the 1,500 to 2,000 US troops US Defence Secretary Ronald Rumsfeld revealed on Sunday were already on the ground in Afghanistan, among them light infantry troops in the north.

“The Arabs are really fighting, they know they have no choice, they are fighting to the death,” Khalid Pashtoon, a spokesman for Gul Agha, told Reuters by satellite phone.—Reuters/AFP