US warplanes bombed targets outside Afghanistan's capital Kabul once again early on Tuesday, as Washington launched its heaviest daylight strikes yet to kill Osama bin Laden and punish his Taliban protectors.
As a low-flying Air Force Special Forces AC-130 gunship concentrated its fire on targets in the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar on Monday, the Taliban's civil war foes said they were closing in on the key northern town of Mazar-i-Sharif, reported Reuters.
US-led forces used helicopters in all-night raids on the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar, a Taliban official told AFP on Tuesday.
"Kandahar was bombarded for the whole night by helicopters and jet planes," said the head of the Taliban's information agency, Abdul Hanan Hemat.
The United States said on Monday that it had deployed an AC-130 gunship in a raid on Taliban forces around Kandahar, but had not made any announcement about the use of helicopters, said the agency.
US-led forces attacking Kandahar hit a clinic in the Daman district of the city, killing at least five people, a Taliban official told AFP Tuesday.
Hemat was quoted as saying another nine civilians had been killed when a bomb struck a residential area in the Panjwaee district of the city.
However, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld described Taliban’s reports of hundreds of civilian casualties as “ridiculous.”
The Taliban earlier said that 200 villagers were killed as US warplanes bombed their village near Jalalabad.
Kabul's electricity supply was cut off indefinitely after the US bombed the city's main power station, a Taliban official said Tuesday.
"We cannot get the power supply to come back on," Hemat told AFP. He said the power station in the northeast of Kabul had been bombed late on Monday.
Electricity has been cut at dusk every night since the US bombing began on October 7, in what had been a defensive move designed to ensure there were no lights which could give the bombers guidance.
But the power did not come back on Tuesday as usual around dawn.
The Taliban said bombing earlier this week had disabled the city's international telephone exchange.
"Targetting electricity supply and international telephone lines is against international law," Hemat said. "This can only hurt ordinary people - it is really contemptible."
North Alliance Claims More Victories
The opposition Northern Alliance said on Monday that they had advanced to within four miles of the airport in the northern Taliban-held city of Mazar-i-Sharif.
Alliance General Abdul Rashid Dostum at the weekend he was preparing an offensive on the city that was his headquarters until Taliban captured it in 1998, said Reuters.
The alliance claims its forces have recently taken two towns.
With casualties and hardships growing, Afghans fleeing the conflict for the safety of neighboring Pakistan say the US onslaught is shifting public opinion in favor of the Taliban.
“I've seen the bodies of women and children pulled out of the rubble of their homes,” Abdul Wali, a shopkeeper from Kandahar, told the agency when he arrived in the Pakistani city of Quetta.
“I have been to funerals too. People are getting angry,” he added. “They are starting to believe what the Taliban tell them - that this is a war by non-Muslims against the Islamic world.”
The Taliban said on Monday that bin Laden and their movement's leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, were alive and well.
POWELL VISITS KARACHI AMID INDIA-PAKISTAN TENSION
US Secretary of State Colin Powell arrived in Pakistan Monday just as tensions with India flared up again over Kashmir, according to AP.
President Bush worried that fighting there “could create issues” for the US-led war next door in Afghanistan.
“It is very important that India and Pakistan stand down during our activities in Afghanistan and, for that matter, forever,” Bush said back in Washington after India shelled Pakistani posts near the ceasefire line.
Powell, who undertook his trip under unusually tight security, will meet with President Pervez Musharraf on Tuesday to discuss reopening military ties and try to keep the Kashmir issue from complicating the US anti-terror campaign in the region.
On Wednesday, Powell travels to India for similar talks with Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
Bush said his secretary of state's mission was “to talk to both sides about making sure that if there are tensions - and obviously there are - that they be reduced.”
“We are mindful that activities around Kashmir could create issues in that part of the region, particularly as we're conducting our operations in Afghanistan,” Bush said after meeting in the Oval Office with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
The Pakistanis received Powell with a general strike and more street protests against the US campaign against Afghanistan - Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
