US warplanes attacked Taliban frontlines north of Kabul for a fourth straight day on Wednesday, after Washington admitted fresh bombing errors and evidence mounted that scores of civilians had died in the campaign against the Afghan regime.
Reports said Tuesday that 136 people were killed in US overnight and daytime air strikes against Afghanistan.
And the United Nations said US attacks destroyed a military hospital on the outskirts of Herat, where the Taliban claim more than 100 doctors, nurses and patients were killed, said AFP.
At least 20 Afghan civilians, including nine children, were killed as they tried to flee a town under attack by US warplanes, according to survivors who managed to escape to Pakistan, speaking to the agency.
Al Jazeera satellite channel’s correspondent in Kandahar said that 93 civilians were killed in one village to the east of the city, and Taliban said around eight had been killed in raids on the capital Kabul.
TV footage of the dead showed that many of them were children and women.
In addition, three Afghans were killed earlier when US warplanes bombed a fuel tanker convoy near Kandahar. Several people were wounded in the incident.
The station showed footage of the vehicles and the bodies of the dead.
The oil was being brought from the western city of Herat to Kandahar, which has been devastated by fierce US bombing. The southern city, home to some of the Taliban's biggest military bases, has been without electricity or water for more than a week and the militia is reportedly running short of fuel for its military vehicles.
US-led forces cranked up the pressure on the Taliban regime Tuesday with a three-pronged assault on the militia's southern heartland, frontline positions in the north and targets in and around Kabul, reported AFP.
And Taliban frontline positions south of the key northern town of Mazar-i-Sharif were under heavy assault from US fighter jets for the third straight day, both the Taliban and their Northern Alliance opponents said.
The western city of Herat was also bombed and the Taliban reported that a mosque in the city had been hit, killing and wounding an unspecified number of men who were praying inside.
Meanwhile, one of the top Northern Alliance commanders told AFP that his forces, accompanied by a small team of US reconnaissance men, had tried to capitalize on the raids with an overnight ground attack on Keshendeh, 70 kilometers (40 miles) south of Mazar-i-Sharif.
Mohammad Atta said between 10 and 20 Taliban fighters were killed in the fighting but that the push had run out of steam.
"At first we made advances but later on the Taliban launched a counter-attack and they were able to regain the lost ground," Atta said.
Taliban front lines north of Kabul were also bombed. The militia struck back by shelling the Northern Alliance-held town of Charikar, killing two people.
An AFP reporter in southwestern Pakistan reported the heaviest volume of US fighter jets flying over the area towards the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar for several days.
There were also fresh daytime raids on Kabul, after two waves of overnight attacks. AIP said US planes had struck the Khair Khana area in the north of the city, where the Taliban has military bases.
A base in the Darul Aman area to the south was also attacked and the Taliban was barring civilians from going anywhere near it, possibly implying there had been significant damage or casualties, residents said.
With barely three weeks until winter sets in, the United States is escalating attacks hoping to topple the Taliban before the harsh Afghan weather begins to hamper military operations.
That has involved softening up Taliban front lines to make it easier for the Northern Alliance civil war opponents to break out of their pockets of territory in the north, as well as directly attacking Taliban troop concentrations and units of Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network.
US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made it clear in Washington that he wanted to see Northern Alliance forces advance swiftly into territory controlled by the Taliban, which still holds nearly 90 percent of the country.
"We have been ready and we certainly are ready to have the alliance forces move both north and south (into Taliban-controlled areas)," he said.
"We believe very strongly that the threat to the world has not disappeared, and the sooner the Al Qaeda and Taliban forces are dealt with, the sooner the threat will begin to moderate, and therefore we're not holding back at all." – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
