CHAMAN, Dec 3: Anti-Taliban forces claimed on Monday to have captured half of Kandahar airport after fierce fighting with Taliban troops as residents reported a further cranking up of US bombardments on the city.

“We have now taken half of the airport,” said Gul Lali, a key lieutenant to former Kandahar governor Gul Agha.

Residents who left Kandahar early on Monday said some anti-Taliban soldiers had been killed in a suicide attack by Taliban supporters.

“Some people told me that several Arabs with grenades strapped around their abdomen managed to enter an advancing column at Torkotal (near Kandahar airport). I believe there were heavy casualties,” said Abdul Masood.

Lali said that their forces had killed 11 foreign Taliban fighters in the operation and overrun a building that appeared to have been used as an office by members of Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network.

“These were 11 of (Osama) bin Laden’s men, from Egypt, Libya and Saudi Arabia. Nineteen more were injured,” Lali said.

Opposition commanders had earlier expressed confidence that the airport would fall by the end of the day, with the Taliban’s defence tactics hamstrung by aerial attacks from US warplanes. Earlier a spokesman for fellow anti-Taliban opposition leader Hamid Karzai had said his tribal forces, coming from the north, were fighting alongside Agha’s men.

Agha and Karzai, who is a former Afghan deputy foreign minister, have been the two leading opposition figures trying to oust the Taliban from their last remaining stronghold in the south.—AFP