Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan – More Marines poured into Afghanistan on Tuesday, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said America was “tightening the noose” around Osama bin Laden and his Taliban allies. Taliban control in their southern stronghold appeared to be crumbling.
“We’ll pursue them until they have nowhere else to run,” Rumsfeld told reporters at the U.S. Central Command headquarters in Tampa, Fla.
U.S. Marines, who established a base in southern Afghanistan late Sunday, sent out armed patrols Tuesday as part of the American effort to bring the fight to the Taliban’s southern homeland.
Less than three days after first landing in southern Afghanistan, more than 600 Marines were on the ground, with at least 400 more on their way. Pentagon officials said they would help choke off escape routes for Taliban leaders and fighters loyal to bin Laden.
The anti-Taliban Northern Alliance said it crushed a bloody, three-day revolt by bin Laden’s foreign fighters who had surrendered last weekend in the northern city of Kunduz.
However, U.S. Gen. Tommy Franks, who runs the U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan, said 30 to 40 hard-core fighters were still holding out in a mud-walled fortress near Mazar-e-Sharif.
With the collapse of Taliban resistance in the north, attention has focused on the south, where the Islamic militia that protected bin Laden remains in control of the city of Kandahar and a handful of provinces.
President Bush launched military operations Oct. 7 in Afghanistan after the Taliban refused to surrender bin Laden, alleged architect of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.
Rumsfeld also said the Pentagon ordered airstrikes Tuesday against a compound southeast of Kandahar after learning that it was being used by senior leaders of the Taliban, al-Qaida and Wafa, a Saudi humanitarian group that was among several groups named by the United States as aiding bin Laden and his network.
U.S. F-16 jets and B-1B bombers attacked two targets with precision-guided weapons, military officials said.
In Washington, D.C., U.S. officials said that of an estimated 4,000 to 5,000 members of bin Laden’s al-Qaida terrorist network in Afghanistan, several hundred have been killed.
Seven of those killed are considered al-Qaida leaders, said another official, speaking on condition of anonymity. They include Mohammed Atef, one of bin Laden’s top two deputies, killed in a U.S. strike around Nov. 14.
Other leaders believed killed include Mohammed Salah and Tariq Anwar, two high-ranking members of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad who are part of al-Qaida, the officials said.
Franks said the hunt for bin Laden and his al-Qaida followers was focusing on two areas: Kandahar in the south and a mountain base called Tora Bora south of Jalalabad in the east near the Pakistan border.
Kandahar residents reached by telephone said Taliban fighters were positioning anti-aircraft guns and mortars on hilltops surrounding the city. But the center of the city appeared largely deserted.
The Taliban have vowed to defend Kandahar rather than abandon it as they did Kabul, the capital, and other cities. However, the South Asian Dispatch Agency, a private Pakistani news service with a correspondent in Kandahar, quoted unidentified Taliban fighters in the city as saying they had been ordered to prepare to leave on short notice.
Copyright ©2001 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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