US President George W. Bush has alleged that Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network is trying to obtain nuclear weapons, while the Pentagon has announced plans to double its troops in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, Northern Alliance leaders have claimed more victories against the Taliban.
In a speech via satellite Tuesday to a conference of Eastern European leaders in Warsaw, Bush compared Al Qaeda to the fascists and totalitarians of the past half century, according to Reuters.
"They're seeking chemical, biological and nuclear weapons," the agency quoted Bush as saying. "Given the means, our enemies would be a threat to every nation and eventually, to civilization itself."
Meanwhile, the United States said it had doubled the number of special operations troops on the ground in Afghanistan, according to Reuters.
Defense Secretary Rumsfeld announced Tuesday that special forces troops on the ground had been more than doubled from fewer than 100 announced last week, and more were preparing to go in when weather permitted to help locate bombing targets, added the agency.
At least twice, according to a US military official quoted by CNN, American forces have dropped the biggest non-nuclear bomb in their inventory - a 15,000-pound fuel-air explosive nicknamed a "daisy cutter." Dropped by parachute, the bomb spreads a flammable mixture over a large area, igniting it when it strikes the ground.
REBEL FORCES CLAIM NEW VICTORIES
The new US announcements came as the opposition Northern Alliance annouced progress in its campaign against the Taliban regime, which the US is targeting for hosting alleged terrorist mastermind bin Laden.
Backed by heavy US bombing, rebel forces claimed the capture Tuesday of several key towns on the road to Mazar-e-Sharif in their first reported significant advance against Taliban defenses, according to AP.
Northern Alliance leaders said they captured the town of Kisindeh. The city is considered key in the war, because it straddles supply routes to the capital Kabul, reported CNN Online.
The alliance earlier said it had taken the Zari district, and that 400 Taliban soldiers defected during the fighting, including five important commanders, added the network.
The reports could not be independently verified.
The opposition said intense strikes by American planes helped open the way for Tuesday's advance, but the agency added that the rebel troops were still miles away from the Taliban stronghold, and confronted with rugged terrain.
US warplanes also hit Taliban positions on another main front of the war, north of Kabul dropping more than a dozen bombs, said AP.
The Taliban say the US-led campaign is a crusade against Islam and claim it has already killed more than 1,500 people, many of them civilians, according to Reuters. Washington says these figures are exaggerated and has ridiculed the claims, despite conmfirmation by the UN and other sources of off-target bombs killing many civilians.
Al Jazeera satellite channel has on at least one occasion broadcast footage of the mutilated bodies of children pulled from the rubble after US bombing.
The United States, criticized in different corners of the Muslim World, says it will fight on through the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, which begins in mid-November.
A fact-finding mission from the British-based Oxfam has called for a ceasefire and secure zones to help deliver food as part of several proposals to meet a "terrible humanitarian crisis."
Humanitarian aid groups have asserted that the continuation of the US-led war will lead to a catastrophe on a colossal scale when winter arrives.
GERMANY PLEDGES TROOPS TO ANTI-TERROR WAR
Germany said Tuesday it would commit 3,900 troops to the US war on terrorism, opening the way for the nation's widest-ranging military engagement since World War II, according to CNN.
However, the network quoted Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder as saying there were no immediate plans to deploy ground troops.
The US launched the war in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 suicide attacks on New York and the Pentagon that killed nearly 6,000 people. Bush claims that evidence links bin Laden to those attacks and several others on Americans.
The goal of the war, according to Pentagon officials, is to uproot bin Laden's Al Qaeda organization from its camps in the mountainous Muslim country, while also toppling the ruling Taliban militia.
Bin Laden's epoused goal is to push out the thousands of US troops stationed in Saudi Arabia, home of Islam's holiest sites, and also to fight the 34-year Israeli military occupation of Palestinian land - Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
