Reports from Afghanistan, said that US jets raided Sunday the capital, Kabul and the southern Taliban stronghold of Kandahar after a seventh night of air strikes on the country.
The BBC said that in the latest air raids, Kabul airport, the military academy and an artillery base were among the reported targets.
The BBC quoted witnesses as saying warplanes dropped three bombs on Kabul, rocking the city with huge explosions and creating a fireball over the airport. Military positions around the city of Jalalabad and a Taliban military camp in Kandahar also came under attack, and strikes were reported on an airport near the western city of Herat, added the BBC.
The rebel northern alliance in Afghanistan says the US strikes have crippled the Taliban’s fighting ability.
"They have lost their capacity to launch counter-offensives," said the alliance's foreign minister, Abdullah Abdullah.
US jets had pounded Afghanistan early Sunday.
As the US-led forces completed a week of air strikes against terrorists and their hosts, the Taliban regime claimed the strikes had caused more civilian casualties here.
The al-Qaeda group of Osama bin Laden, accused by Washington of plotting the September 11 hijack terror attacks on New York and Washington, threatened in a statement issued Saturday that more such attacks will be carried out.
"The storm of airplanes will not be calmed, if it is God's will," bin Laden aide Suleiman Abu Ghaith said in a pre-recorded message broadcast by the Qatar-based al-Jazeera satellite television station early Sunday.
He said the "storm will not calm" until the United States and Britian halt their support of Israel, lift a trade embargo on Iraq, withraw troops from the Arabian peninsula and stop support of Hindus in Kashmir.
He also urged Muslims not to travel by plane and to avoid high-rise buildings in countries that are taking part in air and missile strikes against Afghanistan.
The White House dismissed the Al-Qaeda statement as "just propaganda" and US networks also chose not to broadcast it following government requests amid fears the group was using them to send coded messages to supporters.
After a 24-hour respite, the Afghan capital Kabul and four other cities came under heavy bombardment from before dawn Saturday until the early hours of Sunday, the eighth day of the US-led air assault on Afghanistan, said AFP.
Saturday's air raids included what were believed to be the first afternoon strikes on the western city of Herat and Mazar-i-Sharif in the north, Taliban officials said.
Kabul and Herat airport were heavily bombed again overnight Saturday and early Sunday, with residents in the Afghan capital counting at least 15 explosions.
"One bomb seemed to fall right on the city centre, but the other explosions came from the area of the airport," one resident said.
The Afghan Islamic Press reported bombardments of Jalalabad and Taliban spiritual center of Kandahar, where eyewitnesses reported a major fire at a military compound.
The latest wave of strikes prompted fresh Taliban claims of civilian casualties, including four killed and eight injured in the pre-dawn raid on Kabul on Saturday.
Washington said it had accidentally dropped a 2,000-pound (907-kilo) satellite-guided bomb aimed at a target at Kabul airport on a residential area, saying it believed that four people were killed and eight injured.
"We regret the loss of any civilian life," the Pentagon said in a statement.
The Taliban claim that Washington is targeting civilians and that more than 300 civilians have been killed since the bombings began on October 7, but independent verification was impossible.
Despite the ongoing strikes aimed at forcing the Taliban to hand over bin Laden, President George W. Bush declared that America had won the first phase of its war on terror and had "weakened" the Taliban's military capability.
The armed Afghan opposition said hundreds of the regime's fighters were deserting or switching sides and claimed to have made great gains in the north of the country.
But the Taliban remained defiant, with its reclusive leader Mullah Mohammad Omar rejecting Bush's offer of a "second chance" to surrender bin Laden. He said Washington was using bin Laden as a pretext to wage a war on Islam.
"We do not have any extradition treaty with America under which we can hand over the suspected people," the Afghan Islamic Press quoted Omar as saying.
"Our sin is that we have enforced Islamic laws in the country. We have given shelter to an innocent and shelterless Muslim who is not even allowed to spend an hour in any other country."
Despite mountings expectations of a ground phase to the strikes on Afghanistan, a member the British war cabinet, Clare Short, said Saturday there were no plans for a broadbased "mass land invasion," and urged a swift end to the US-led military operation there.
The Pentagon's acknowledgement of an errant bombing was likely to fuel criticism in Islamic countries of the military offensive.
The demonstrations spread to Europe on Saturday, with protesters turning out in Britain, Germany and France, three of the United States' closest allies, as well as Switzerland. No violence was reported.
France's Green Party, part of the governing coalition, condemned the US strikes as hundreds vented their opposition in several cities.
Protests also erupted in the northern Nigerian city of Kano, where a demonstration by some 5,000 people spilled over into riots that left at least eight people dead and dozens injured, according to witnesses.
In the United States, five more people working for a publishing company in Florida tested positive for anthrax, after one of their colleagues died and two others were exposed to the deadly disease.
However, it was not immediately clear if the new cases were related to the original cases.
Bush attempted to calm fears over an anthrax attack after Vice President Dick Cheney said he could not rule out a link between the sudden appearance of the rare infection and bin Laden's organization.
An employee of NBC New in New York was found to have been infected by anthrax after she opened a threatening letter containg a suspicious powder which has tested positive for the disease.
Officials in New York said Saturday that a second NBC employee showed symptoms of the disease.
The woman's illness is less serious than the respiratory anthrax that killed a tabloid journalist in Florida last week, and she is expected to recover.
It was the first time the source of anthrax has been pinpointed since a scare over the illness emerged last week.
Anthrax spores were also found on a letter sent to a Microsoft office in the southwestern state of Nevada.
Speaking on PBS public television on Friday, Cheney said that "nobody's made a direct link yet" with bin Laden but added: "I think the only responsible thing for us to do is proceed on the basis that it could be linked."
Health officials have pleaded for calm, saying there was no evidence yet to link the cases to the September 11 terrorist strikes. – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
