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ISLAMABAD, Nov 10: Three consecutive days of US bombing flattened three villages in southern Afghanistan, killing more than 300 civilians.
United States warplanes bombed the villages in Khakrez district, 70 kilometres northwest of Kandahar, the spiritual centre of the embattled Taliban.
Rescuers said they had dug out 133 dead bodies from Shah Agha village.
All the 70 houses in the second village, Asmaan Zai, had been flattened.
ON the Kabul front, a B-52 bomber dropped a cluster bomb on the Taliban’s positions near the Bagram airbase on Saturday.
The aircraft, clearly visible, made several sorties before dropping the bomb, which produced a vast cloud of smoke at the foot of the Koh-i-Safi.
The latest bombing came after Northern Alliance commanders spoke of an imminent attack on the Kabul front lines near the disused air base at Bagram.
The front lines extend some 100 kilometres to the north of Kabul. The opposition controls the airport, near which the Taliban hold three access roads to the Afghan capital.
‘TACTICAL RETREAT’: The Taliban on Saturday claimed the militia’s eviction from Mazar-i-Sharif was a “pre-planned move”.
“The eviction from Mazar-i-Sharif was a pre-planned move and the results will be favourable to Taliban,” the Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) quoted an unnamed Taliban official as saying.
“There is no matter of concern and we are taking steps in accordance with our plans,” an official said.
The official claimed that the Taliban militia was in the safe places with its military resources and none of its soldiers arrested by the opposition Northern Alliance troops.
“The opposition troops captured Mazar-i-Sharif without fighting,” he said.
He rejected the opposition’s claims that other Taliban-controlled cities are being captured.
“We have full control over Samangan, Jowzjan, and Sur-i-Pul,” Taliban official said.
Earlier on Saturday, the AIP reported that the Taliban militia had retreated to Aqcha to the west and Hairatan Junction in the east.
Aqcha lies some 70 kilometres to the west, and Hairatan Junction that borders Uzbekistan, some 20 kilometres to the east of Mazar-i-Sharif.
According to the agency, the Taliban have now regrouped at Shiberghan, the capital of Jauzjan province some 70 kilometres west of Mazar-i-Sharif.
Shibgerghan is Dostum’s home town, which he used as his headquarters until its fall to Taliban in May 1997.
Dostum said that he and other commanders were inside Mazar-i-Sharif, where their forces had encountered fierce resistance, according to the BBC World Service.
Other opposition spokesmen earlier said they had killed up to 200 Taliban fighters, captured the airport and key military installations and sent the Taliban fleeing toward Kabul, which is about 300 kilometres southeast of Mazar-i-Sharif.
Taliban sources told the AIP that the US-led coalition’s heavy bombardment had paved the way for opposition troops to enter the southern outskirts of Mazar-i-Sharif.—dpa\AFP
