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KABUL/WASHINGTON, Oct 11: US led forces using cluster bombs unleashed the fiercest round yet of their onslaught on Afghanistan on Thursday in what Kabul residents called a terrible inferno of destruction.
Taliban said more than 140 civilians had been killed in the last 24 hours of the raids since Sunday when the attacks were launched.
They said 50 bodies had been pulled from the rubble of one village in the east after bombing runs which Washington is aiming at the Taliban and Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda group.
The campaign against the Taliban has stoked anti-Western anger among Muslims from Jakarta to Cape Town and British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Western countries were in danger of losing the propaganda battle for Arab and Muslim support.
Britain said the war, in which it is helping the United States, would stretch well into next year. “We must expect at least to go through the winter into next summer at the very least,” Sir Michael Boyce, chief of the British defence staff, told a news conference. He said the campaign had hit 40 targets so far.
US defence officials said heavy B-52 and B-1 bombers targeted Taliban troops overnight on Wednesday and into Thursday, using among other weapons cluster bombs that open as they fall to release dozens of high-explosive bomblets.
“We dropped a lot of bombs,” one of the officials said. “We have said that this will be relentless, and it will.”
VILLAGE REPORTED FLATTENED: The Afghan Islamic Press, citing Taliban and other sources, said Kouram village, around 35 km from the eastern city of Jalalabad, had been flattened in Wednesday night’s attack.
“So far more than 50 bodies have been recovered and the fear is that the number of martyrs will be more than 100,” it quoted a Taliban spokesman in the area as saying.
According to Taliban figures, the total number of deaths in Afghanistan since Sunday now stands at around 220.
Taliban officials said the latest casualties included 15 people killed in a mosque in Jalalabad.
British Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon said the reports of civilian deaths were being investigated. “We are not engaged in a fight against the Afghan people. We regret the deaths of any civilians... Every effort is made to minimise the risk to civilians.”
President George W. Bush, who scheduled a news conference for 2400 GMT to discuss the campaign, told a memorial service at the Pentagon, where 189 people were killed by one of the hijacked planes, that the armed forces “will have everything you need ... to assure full victory for the United States and the cause of freedom.”
A US Air Force sergeant on active duty in the northern Arabian peninsula became the first American fatality of the war when he was killed in an accident.
Up to five US jets bombed areas south of Kabul on Thursday night, drawing anti-aircraft fire, witnesses said. They dropped three to four bombs and apparently hit a Taliban munitions dump.
“There are explosions and flashes every 10 seconds or so. I think it must have hit an ammunition site,” one witness said.
The raids followed a night of almost constant bombardment on Wednesday. “It was like an inferno,” said one young man. “The explosions were so huge and so massive, that it felt like an earthquake, as if an atomic bomb had been dropped on Kabul.”
Blast after blast ripped through the city. The impact could be felt across the capital, rattling windows and shaking the foundations of homes and offices.
“This is the worst night that we have had so far,” said one resident. “There has been no chance to sleep. I cannot tell you how frightened people are. It is terrible.”
ANGRY MUSLIMS STAGE PROTESTS: Muslims outraged at the raids on Afghanistan staged protests in countries including Bangladesh, Jordan, South Africa, India, Iran, Pakistan and Indonesia.
Alarm rippled among Western expatriates in the Gulf after a Canadian was shot dead in Kuwait in what appeared to be a response to the US air raids. A German couple in Saudi Arabia were attacked with a molotov cocktail but escaped injury.
“A lot of people are stocking up on food and supplies so that if something does happen they can be more secure — I see water being stockpiled and canned goods,” said Saudi-based US executive David Castillo, 57.
Former US President Bill Clinton cancelled a trip to the United Arab Emirates “due to the current international situation,” organisers said.
A radical Indonesian group — the small but vocal Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) — said it would try to drive Americans and Britons out of the country after the government ignored a deadline to cut ties with the United States.
Iran said it approved of punishing those behind the suicide attacks on the United States but described the retaliatory assault on Afghanistan as “useless.”
Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi told his British counterpart Jack Straw that the Western allies should take public opinion in the Muslim world into account and try not to “harm innocent people.”
Blair, touring the Middle East to bolster support for the war on al Qaeda and the Taliban, told reporters: “One thing becoming increasingly clear to me is the need to upgrade our media and public opinion operations in the Arab and Muslim world. There is a need for us to communicate effectively.”
Underlining his point, a Saudi-owned newspaper reported that Saudi Arabia asked the British leader, on a tour of the Middle East, to cancel a planned visit to the kingdom.
Pakistan’s Jamaat-i-Islami, said it would launch a campaign to force the military government either to revise its support for the strikes or give up power.
“If the government does not change its support to America we have the right to pull down the unconstitutional government of (General) Pervez Musharraf,” party leader Qazi Hussain Ahmed told a gathering of several thousand tribal members near the Afghan border.
Troops began patrolling streets in the troubled southwestern city of Quetta on Thursday on the eve of a general strike called by religious parties.
At a news conference in Islamabad, Taliban Ambassador to Pakistan Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef said the entry of ground troops into the conflict would mark the start of the real war.
“America is thirsty for more bloodshed in Afghanistan. The number of casualties is increasing with the passage of time. This is a gift of America to the innocent people of Afghanistan,” he said.
Fleeing residents of the Afghan city of Kandahar said in Pakistan that two relatives of Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar killed in a US raid on his house this week were his 10-year-old son and his stepfather.
They said the Taliban leader had just left the house in the Sangisar district of the city when a bomb struck it but many members of his family were still inside.
The UN World Food Programme said it was racing against time to send badly needed food shipments into Afghanistan before winter set in.
“It is one of the most difficult tasks WFP has faced in its history. The harsh winter is approaching and many human lives are at stake,” WFP spokesman Francesco Luna told a news conference in Islamabad.
In Washington, US Attorney General John Ashcroft said the investigation into three cases of anthrax exposure in Florida was now a criminal matter but there was still no evidence linking them to the Sept. 11 attacks.
Officials said on Wednesday a third person, a 35-year-old woman, had tested positive for exposure to anthrax, often cited as a germ warfare agent. A 63-year-old colleague of the woman died last Friday.
On Wall Street, stocks climbed to session highs in mid-afternoon on Thursday, almost entirely erasing the loss in the month since Sept. 11, as another batch of corporate results sparked hopes for better days ahead.
The Pentagon, responding to rumours in financial markets, said it had no indication that Osama bin Laden had been captured. —Reuters
