US and British forces Sunday launched military strikes against Afghanistan in response to the September 11 terror attacks on the United States, President George W. Bush said, claiming the support of "the collective will of the world."
"The battle is now joined on many fronts," Bush told his nation shortly after the strikes began. "We will not waiver, we will not falter, and we will not fail. Peace and freedom will prevail."
The attacks target terror suspect Osama bin Laden's "al-Qaeda camps and military installations" of Afghanistan's Taliban regime, which is sheltering the Saudi-born extremist blamed for the September 11 assaults, he said.
US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said US-led forces used "land and sea-based aircraft, surface ships and submarines" in the strikes.
Other US officials said some 50 Tomahawk missiles were fired in the attack.
The Taliban quickly condemned the offensive as a "terrorist act" and reiterated their refusal to hand bin Laden over to the United States.
The Afghan capital was rocked by loud explosions and power supplies were cut, residents said.
They said they could hear fighter jets flying high over the city as Taliban artillery, anti-aircraft and small arms fire resounded.
The anti-Taliban Northern Alliance said the strikes, in addition to Kabul and Kanadahar, the spiritual center of the Taliban, had also hit military sites in the eastern city of Jalalabad, Farah in the west and Kunduz in the north.
An Alliance spokesman, joined by telephone from Rome, said the targets in Kabul included the presidential palace, the national radio-television building, the airport and anti-aircraft installations east of the city.
"We do not have any reports of civilian casualties, but we know the strikes have been accurate," the spokesman said.
Opposition sources in Islamabad told AFP their forces were waiting for orders to launch a massive, countrywide ground offensive against the Taliban, a harshly fundamentalist Islamic militia which took power in Kabul in 1996.
Washington quickly issued a warning to US citizens across the world, telling them that the strikes could lead to terrorist attacks against Americans and US interests abroad. Italy and Germany announced stepped up security around sensitive locations.
In London, Bush's closest ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, said British missile-firing submarines were involved in the strikes.
"Last Wednesday, the US government made a specific request that a number of UK military assets be used in the operation which has now begun and I gave authority for these assets to be deployed," Blair told a press conference.
"They include the bases at Diego Garcia, reconnaissance and other aircrafts and missile-firing submarines," he said.
"The missile-firing submarines are in use tonight. The air assets will be available for use in the coming days," he added.
Bush said other allies, including Canada, Australia, Germany and France, had pledged to contribute as the action unfolds.
"We are supported by the collective will of the world," he said.
Terrorist camps, air bases and air defense installations were the first set of targets Sunday, a US defense official said, vowing that "It's going to be shake and bake until we smoke them out."
In Moscow, the Kremlin said Bush had told his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin about the strikes only minutes before they were unleashed.
Germany supports "without reservation" the attacks on "terrorist targets in Afghanistan," German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said, adding that Bush had informed him by telephone of the imminence of the assault.
In Rome, a top aide to former Afghan monarch Mohammed Zahir Shah, considered a key player in efforts to set up a post-Taliban regime in Afghanistan, said the ex-king was "shocked and saddened" by the attacks as he watched them unfold on television.
"Now my hope is that it stops quickly and that people are not hurt. I really didn't think it was inevitable," the spokesman said of the attack. "We had hoped that it could be prevented."
The United States had vowed to strike at the Taliban unless they surrendered bin Laden, wanted for the terrorist onslaught on the United States.
Last week, Bush presented evidence to allies proving that bin Laden, al-Qaeda and the Taliban were behind the September 11 attacks in which bin Laden followers hijacked four US passenger planes.
They rammed two of the planes into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, totally destroying the New York landmark, and crashed one into the Pentagon, the suburban Washington center of US military might.
The fourth plane crashed into the Pennsylvania countryside, apparently after passengers prevented the hijackers from directing the aircraft on to a third target -- possibly the White House or the US Capitol.
In all, some 5,500 lives were lost.
Bush said he gave the Taliban a series of demands over the past two weeks to close terrorist training camps, hand over al-Qaeda militants and release all foreign nationals, including US citizens, detained in Afghanistan.
"None of these demands were met," he said, "and now the Taliban will pay a price. By destroying camps and disrupting communications, we will make it more difficult for the terror network to train new recruits and coordinate their evil plans."
After September 11, Bush had declared a global anti-terror offensive on several fronts, including diplomacy, intelligence sharing, freezing financial assets of terror-linked groups and the arrests of known terrorists worldwide.
"Today we focus on Afghanistan, but the battle is broader," he said. "Every nation has a choice to make. In this conflict, there is no neutral ground.
"If any government sponsors the outlaws and killers of innocents, they have become outlaws and murderers themselves. And they will take that lonely path at their own peril."
Bush stressed, however, that humanitarian considerations would not go on the back burner.
"At the same time, the oppressed people of Afghanistan will know the generosity of America and our allies," he said. "As we strike military targets, we will also drop food, medicine and supplies to the starving and suffering men and women and children of Afghanistan.
"The United States of America is a friend to the Afghan people, and we are the friends of almost a billion worldwide who practice the Islamic faith.
"The United States of America is an enemy of those who aid terrorists and of the barbaric criminals who profane a great religion by committing murder in its name."
He warned, however, that it would be long, drawn-out campaign.
"Given the nature and reach of our enemies, we will win this conflict by the patient accumulation of successes, by meeting a series of challenges with determination and will and purpose," he said.
"We did not ask for this mission, but we will fulfill it," he said.
The attacks were preceded by reports of desertions from Taliban ranks and increased fighting between troops of the ruling militia and their opponents of the Northern Alliance.
An opposition spokesman said eight Taliban commanders and 100 fighters had surrendered Sunday, "because they heard that America would attack the Taliban tonight and they were afraid."
The strikes came after a unit of US soldiers, the first ground combat troops to be deployed in the anti-terror campaign, arrived at an airbase in southern Uzbekistan.
A defense ministry official in Tashkent would not name the base where the advance party of 1,000 troops from the elite US 10th Mountain Division was deployed, but all indications were that it was at Khanabad, near the southern city of Karshi.
The Taliban had claimed earlier Sunday to have massed reinforcements on the Uzbek border as a riposte to the US presence, but an opposition official dismissed this -- WASHINGTON (AFP)
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
