Herald wire services
WASHINGTON – U.S. Marines advanced Tuesday from their Afghan desert base to prepare for the siege of Kandahar.
They began scouting enemy movements from helicopters and armored vehicles and setting up checkpoints to seal the roads and prevent the Taliban from reinforcing – or from escaping – their largest stronghold, Pentagon officials said.
Special Operations forces from Britain and Australia joined the Marines as they began their new mission overnight to seek direct confrontation with Taliban forces, Pentagon officials said in announcing a steady increase of the American role in the ground war.
One American commando was shot in the shoulder Tuesday in fighting north of Kandahar. Military officials described his injury as not life threatening.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that, as of Tuesday, there were no plans for the Marines to join the rapidly approaching final assault on Kandahar, the Taliban’s spiritual capital. For now, the job of conquering the city will be left to southern Pashtun tribal fighters, who have been gradually encircling it.
In the air campaign on Tuesday, American warplanes focused their attacks on cave and tunnel complexes in eastern Afghanistan, from Kabul to the Khyber Pass, in the continuing effort to dig out or kill al-Qaida leaders believed to be in hiding there – among them, perhaps, Osama bin Laden.
Pentagon officials said a new weapon had entered the hunt for bin Laden, a precision missile called the AGM-142 “HAVE NAP.” In recent days, B-52 bombers have launched at those caves a handful of the 3,000-pound missiles, which have a special tip that penetrates rock. The weapon is jointly produced with Israel.
The airstrikes killed 15 al-Qaida members early Tuesday, anti-Taliban officials said.
The Afghan opposition called the Eastern Shura said its fighters moved toward the well-defended cave complex of Tora Bora, where bin Laden had been observed four or five days ago, a claim that Pentagon and intelligence officials said they could not confirm.
“We think he’s in Afghanistan,” Rumsfeld said Tuesday. “He may not be. No one knows.”
By Tuesday night, more than 1,000 opposition soldiers had gathered at the edge of Tora Bora. Their numbers will swell to 3,000 over the next two days, their commanders say. The warriors plan to lay siege to the hide-outs by cutting off the water supply and blocking the road to Jalalabad. “Without water,” Zaman said, “life is very difficult.”
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