0
WASHINGTON/KABUL, Oct 14: The US warplanes again pounded Afghanistan on Sunday, beginning a second week of air strikes against Taliban rulers and loyalists of Osama bin Laden, while five new cases of anthrax exposure were confirmed in the United States.
At the end of the first week of a US air campaign against Osama, his al Qaeda network and the ruling Taliban, waves of planes struck targets around the Afghan capital Kabul and three other key cities.
In a possible sign the US raids were sapping Taliban strength, the Taliban intelligence chief said on Sunday his movement wanted opposition commanders to join them to fight US-led attacks on the country.
Qari Ahmadullah was quoted by the Pakistan-based AIP as saying that Taliban leader Mulla Mohammad Omar had issued orders not to seize weapons from opposition fighters who joined hands with the Taliban.
In Kabul, sporadic anti-aircraft fire erupted in the morning as a single plane screamed above the city. The fire from the ground was weak, indicating the city’s anti-aircraft defences may have suffered severe damage.
Jets bombed military targets and the airport in southern Kandahar, the old royal capital and Taliban redoubt, causing a fire, the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) reported. Herat airport in western Afghanistan was also pounded in five raids from 3:00am (03.30am PST), it said.
In Jalalabad in the east, US warplanes dropped some bombs on a military base, witnesses and news agencies said.
The first strikes hit an army installation and wounded at least six people, the AIP said. Two more bombs exploded on the outskirts, believed to be dotted with guerilla camps.
TERRORISTS: ”I believe that it is very unlikely that all of those individuals who were associated with or involved with the terrorism events of Sept 11 and other terrorism events that may have been propositioned and preplanned have been apprehended,” Ashcroft told NBC’s “Meet the Press” programme.
“We are doing everything possible to disrupt, interrupt, prevent, to destabilize any additional activity,” Ashcroft said. “We are on alert.”
Al Qaeda warned the United States and Britain to end the air strikes and get out of the Gulf or suffer more violent attacks and a “storm of hijacked planes.”
The Taliban estimates that more than 300 people, mostly civilians, have been killed since air raids began on Oct 7 and on Saturday the Pentagon acknowledged a 2,000-pound bomb had hit a house in Kabul after missing its target at the airport. At least one person died and four were wounded by the bomb.
“We regret the loss of any civilian life,” the US Defence Department said in a statement. “Preliminary indications are that the accident occurred from a targeting process error.”
In the eastern village of Khorum, Taliban officials said as many as 200 people may have been killed when a simple collection of mud huts and livestock pens was flattened in an air raid on Wednesday. —Reuters
