Herald news services
KABUL, Afghanistan – Huge explosions shook the Afghan capital throughout the day Monday with two more jets reported attacking the northern part of the city early today.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, speaking at the Pentagon, suggested U.S. airstrikes could start targeting Taliban front-line positions facing Afghan opposition fighters in the northeast of the country.
The opposition alliance claimed Monday it had advanced close to Mazar-e-Sharif, the largest city in the north, and that some 4,000 Taliban troops defected over the weekend. The Taliban denied the defection claim.
The attacks Monday against Kabul started just before sunrise and continued through the day into the night. Taliban gunners fired in vain at the attacking planes, some so high they could not be heard from the ground.
In one nighttime raid, 10 huge explosions in the direction of the airport shook buildings miles away.
One bomb exploded near a U.N. World Food Program warehouse on the northern edge of Kabul, slightly injuring one Afghan employee, U.N. spokesman Khaled Mansour said in Pakistan.
In the Jalalabad area of eastern Afghanistan, U.S. jets struck the regional military headquarters near the airport and Tora-Bora, a suspected terrorist training camp of Osama bin Laden.
An Afghan refugee arriving in the Pakistani border town of Chaman said a suspected ammunition depot in Kandahar, the southern city where the Taliban leadership is based, was ablaze after a hit Monday by U.S. missiles.
The United States launched the air campaign on Oct. 7 to root out bin Laden – the top suspect in Sept. 11 terror attacks in the United States – and to punish Afghanistan’s rulers, the Taliban hard-line Islamic militia, who harbor him.
Rumsfeld said warplanes had dropped leaflets over Afghanistan for the first time Monday.
Over the weekend, more than 68,000 ration packets were dropped, bringing the total to 275,000 since the effort began.
The Taliban Information Ministry claimed 12 people died Monday during a raid in western Badgus province. The Taliban said some 200 civilians were killed Thursday when U.S. jets attacked the village of Karam in eastern Afghanistan.
Rumsfeld said target camera footage showed the U.S. weapons hit either inside or very near the caves near Karam that held military equipment. Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said U.S. officials were surprised by huge explosions that resulted and a four-hour fire that raged after the strike.
Those explosions showed “they were not cooking cookies inside those tunnels,” Rumsfeld said.
He also said some of the Taliban casualty claims were “ridiculous.” But he acknowledged that some Afghan civilians have been killed unintentionally, without offering specific numbers.
He said U.S. planes have so far avoided striking Taliban positions on the front lines because of incomplete targeting information. But he said that might soon change.
“I suspect that in the period ahead that’s not going to be a very safe place to be” for Taliban fighters, he said. “We hope to have improved targeting information in the period ahead.
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