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US planes target al-Qaeda, Taliban frontline positions

A US pilot inspects his AV-8B Harrier prior to a mission over Afghanistan, aboard the USS Peleliu at an undisclosed location at sea. PHOTO: AP

Giant B-52 bombers pounded the front lines of the Taliban forces north of Kabul yesterday, but the ruling militia said US bombs had failed to dent their fighting ability and had killed more civilians.

At least five waves of B-52 bombers flew over the front line, on the first round dropping huge single bombs and then pounding the entrenched Taliban positions with strings of smaller blasts, said reporters near the frontline.

"They have hit the right places," said Northern Alliance commander Asil Khan as he watched the raids, adding that the planes had targeted Arab and Pakistani fighters from Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network who have taken up positions at the front.

Huge columns of smoke rose as Northern Alliance forces in observation posts cheered the US attacks on the Taliban fighters.

Amid the bombardment, aimed at weakening the entrenched forward fighters of the Taliban, the opposition said they had moved troops forward in northern Balkh province closer to the strategic provincial capital, Mazar-i-Sharif, in a sign of a possible offensive.

"We have moved fighters to Shurgar," Ustad Mohakik, the leading Shi'ite Muslim commander in the disparate Northern Alliance, told reporters in Islamabad by satellite telephone from near the front in the north. Shurgar is some 60km south of Mazar-i-Sharif.

Forces loyal to ethnic Uzbek warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostum had also moved towards Shurgar, Mohakik said, a day after the opposition claimed the capture of Keshendeh, 40km south of Mazar-i-Sharif. The area has changed hands several times since May in clashes between the Taliban and Dostum's forces.

The anti-Taliban forces say they have recently gained ground in Balkh province bordering Uzbekistan in a slow-moving campaign to try to capture Mazar-i-Sharif, which commands a strategic east-west highway and key supply link to Kabul as well as a major airfield.

Muhakik has said 400 Taliban defected to Alliance forces who recovered a large amount of Taliban weapons and ammunition.

None of the reports could be independently verified.

In Kabul, US planes en route to the front line could be heard through the night and into the dawn in the skies on the 32nd day of the American air assault.

Taliban officials said the aircraft had pounded the front lines, both to the north of Kabul where their forces face those of the Northern Alliance across the lush Shomali plain, as well as positions in the north of the country.

The officials said the raids had had little impact on their fighters, but had claimed civilian lives.

At Surkhrod near the eastern city of Jalalabad, six people were killed and seven wounded when a bomb hit a village, said Information Ministry official Qari Fazil Rabi.

The raids throughout Tuesday night and into the morning targeted Taliban tanks and artillery overlooking Bagram airbase, which is held by Northern Alliance forces, dropping enormous bombs, witnesses said.

"It felt like several earthquakes just after midnight," said a photographer. "The house shook twice and each time there were four or five tremors from the bombs."

The Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) agency has said its estimates showed the US bombing had killed a total 633 civilians and wounded up to 1,000 in the first 29 days of the campaign.

The Taliban have said 1,500 civilians have been killed. The US rejects Taliban civilian casualty figures as exaggerated.
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