Herald news services
WASHINGTON — Jets bombed the stronghold of Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban militia in southern Kandahar hours after dawn today, Taliban officials said. Taliban soldiers replied with heavy antiaircraft fire as the planes streaked over Kandahar at about 8:15 a.m.
The United States had pounded terrorist targets in Afghanistan from the air for a second night Monday, and hints abounded that the operation may expand.
The military campaign is aimed at punishing the Taliban for harboring bin Laden, the man accused of plotting the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington that left more than 5,500 people dead or missing.
Today’s strike on Kandahar, the seat of the rigorously Islamic Taliban militia that rules Afghanistan, came shortly after a lone jet screamed through the early dawn sky over the capital, Kabul, dropping a bomb north of the city near the airport.
Hours earlier, on Monday night, three U.S. bombs were dropped on Kabul from a high-flying jet. Four Afghan United Nations workers were reported killed in that raid.
The Pentagon said five long-range bombers, 10 sea-launched warplanes and 15 Tomahawk cruise missiles on Monday night struck an undisclosed number of targets, including early warning radars, Taliban ground forces and military command sites. It was smaller than Sunday’s opening attacks.
Feeding while firing, the U.S. operation dropped 37,000 packages of food rations on Monday — about the same number as Sunday.
All of the aircraft returned safely, the Pentagon said.
When the U.S. bombing campaign in Afghanistan starts to wind down at the end of this week, the Pentagon plans to begin the next phase of the war on terrorism by sending a significant number of additional ground troops to the Mideast and Central Asia, defense officials said Monday, according to The Washington Post.
The deployment of the additional forces is not a prelude to a full-scale conventional ground attack on Afghanistan, they said, but the next step in what is essentially an ad hoc approach to an unconventional war. Their presence will give planners maximum flexibility as they consider options in the days ahead, a senior defense official said.
"They (the troops) will start to go, but it’s not because we have a clear and defined plan," the official said. "We want to position ourself in such a fashion that we have a wide range of options."
Asked whether the Pentagon is considering large-scale ground attacks inside Afghanistan, one official said, "Nothing has been ruled out," the Post reported.
President Bush has not disclosed his plans to follow up the air strikes. The Bush administration has notified the U.N. Security Council that the military campaign launched two days ago could move beyond Afghanistan, although U.S. officials attempted Monday to downplay the prospect of American-led strikes against other nations, saying the Security Council letter signals no change in plans to hunt down anyone linked to the Sept. 11 attacks against the United States.
"The letter states what the president has been saying all along, that the United States reserves the right to defend itself wherever it is necessary," said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Bush’s staunchest ally, hinted Monday that the offensive would expand.
"In time, (the airstrikes) will be supported by other actions, again carefully targeted," Blair said. He didn’t elaborate, but the British defense ministry said that ground operations were an option.
On Monday, antiaircraft fire lit the skies over the Afghan capital of Kabul, where electricity was cut and Taliban radio told residents to close the blinds on their windows and remain indoors. A Taliban-friendly news agency said an airport and TV transmission tower were targeted and a bomb landed near a 400-bed women’s hospital — reports that were not confirmed by the Pentagon.
The Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef, called the U.S.-led attacks indiscriminate terror against civilians, and said women, children and elderly were among 20 killed in Kabul in Sunday’s assault.
The deaths could not be independently verified.
Officials at Kabul’s Wazir Akbar Khan Hospital said the victims of the Monday night bombing raid were U.N. workers who cleared anti-personnel mines in Kabul, one of the world’s most heavily mined cities.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the United States was working with the Northern Alliance, which controls less than 10 percent of Afghanistan, and tribes in the south who oppose the Taliban.
As lawmakers were briefed, U.S. strikes were sending thousands of Afghan refugees in flight from Kabul, their possessions strapped to donkeys. The line of hungry, scared Afghanis crossed paths with Northern Alliance fighters.
The soldiers were moving Soviet-made Scud missiles south toward the capital, apparently preparing for an offensive on Kabul under the protection of U.S. airstrikes.
Other aerial strikes were under way on the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar, according to a Taliban official who refused to be identified by name.
At the same time, the Afghan Islamic Press agency said the Northern Alliance launched a major attack Monday evening on the Taliban position near Dara-e-Suf, not far away.
Meanwhile, Rep. Brian Baird, D-Wash., plans to introduce a constitutional amendment today that would allow governors to appoint House members to 90-day terms in the event that a quarter, 109 or more, representatives are killed, disabled, missing or presumed dead.
Baird said he’s worried that without such an amendment the government could grind to a halt while special elections are held to fill the vacancies.
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