Herald news services
BAGRAM, Afghanistan – U.S. jets struck Taliban front lines and an Osama bin Laden stronghold north of Kabul on Tuesday – attacks the opposition hopes will open the way for an advance on Kabul. But Taliban troops held their ground, launching rockets and mortars toward positions held by the Northern Alliance.
In Washington, D.C., Pentagon officials on Tuesday conceded that accidental bombings over the weekend could have resulted in civilian casualties in Afghanistan.
After sundown Tuesday, American jets returned to Kabul, repeatedly blasting targets on the outskirts of the city in what appeared to be one of the largest attacks in the capital area.
Warplanes apparently renewed the attack shortly before sunrise today, as sounds of heavy bombardment were heard near Kabul’s airport.
Opposition and Taliban officials reported U.S. attacks Tuesday around the key northern city Mazar-e-Sharif, where an offensive last week by the opposition Northern Alliance faltered. The Taliban claimed they repulsed attacks that followed the American bombardment.
American warplanes set fire to critical Taliban oil supplies at Taliban headquarters in the southern city of Kandahar – said to be all but abandoned by its half-million inhabitants after weeks of attacks.
Some of the bombs struck the village of Uzbashi, an al-Qaida encampment near Bagram, opposition spokesman Waisuddin Salik said.
The bombing, however, seemed only to make the Taliban forces more aggressive. As U.S. jets thundered overhead, Taliban gunners opened up with mortars, rockets and artillery on alliance lines.
One Taliban rocket slammed into the public market at Charikar, 30 miles north of Kabul, killing two people – including a 60-year-old vendor – and injuring 14 others.
In Washington, the Pentagon said a Navy FA-18 Hornet accidentally dropped a 1,000-pound bomb near a senior citizens home in the northern Afghan city of Herat on Sunday morning, and a Navy F-14 dropped two 500-pound bombs in a residential area northwest of Kabul on Saturday night, both of which could have resulted in civilian casualties.
The home for the elderly was 300 feet from a vehicle storage facility at an army barracks that was the bomb’s intended target.
Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said the senior citizens home in Herat could be the same facility that a United Nations official identified Tuesday as a military hospital. Clarke attributed both incidents to guidance-system malfunctions.
“We regret any loss of civilian life,” Clarke said, though she refused to respond to claims by Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban militia that as many as 100 people had been killed in Herat. “We take great care in our targeting process to avoid civilian casualties,” she said.
Clarke rejected as “completely outrageous” Taliban claims that more than 1,000 civilians have been killed since the beginning of the airstrikes on Oct. 7.
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