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Marines join hunt as anthrax again jangles nerves

Vowing to stay in Afghanistan until the job is done, the US sent in more marines to join the hunt for Osama bin Laden while the world struggled to bring peace and hope to the war-ravaged land.

"We could be there for quite a while, which is fine, because we've got an objective in mind, and we'll stay there until we get our objective," US President George W. Bush told reporters in Washington.

The Pentagon said it was sending the marines to the central Asian region, ready for orders to track down the Saudi-born millionaire it says masterminded the Sept. 11 suicide attacks that killed thousands of people in the US.

US-led forces targeted bin Laden's long-time protectors, the strictly Muslim Taliban, at strongholds in the north and south as Germany prepared to host rival Afghan factions next Monday for talks on their political future.

Yesterday the Taliban again denied knowing where bin Laden was. Spokesman Tayab Agha told a news conference: "There is no relation right now, there is no communication."

The general in charge of the US campaign paid a brief visit to Afghanistan on Tuesday, his first of the war.

US General Tommy Franks did not rule out putting ground troops into the rugged country, where the Taliban are still holding out in strongholds in some areas and where US special forces are already operating.

US planes, in action for a 46th day, kept up attacks on the besieged Taliban enclave of Kunduz yesterday, the Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) reported, as thousands of defenders tried to negotiate a surrender.

The US strikes on Taliban positions and civilian areas in Kunduz caused considerable loss of life, the Pakistan-based AIP said, but this could not be verified independently.

More than 10,000 Afghan Taliban troops and Pakistani, Arab and Chechen fighters loyal to bin Laden are encircled in Kunduz, the fundamentalists' last stronghold in the north.

Taliban defectors and anti-Taliban Northern Alliance troops surrounding Kunduz say Afghan Taliban fighters want to surrender, but their comrades from bin Laden's al-Qaeda network -- aware they have nowhere to run -- plan to fight to the death and have prevented their surrender, witnesses said.

The Northern Alliance says it has suspended its ground offensive on the city while surrender talks go on, but US planes have staged daily bombing raids.

The US has also bombed Kandahar, spiritual home of the embattled Taliban and still firmly under their control, according to Afghans at the Pakistani border. AIP said overnight bombs killed two people in the city.

Meanwhile, in the US, fears of biowarfare resurfaced as a new case of inhalation anthrax was reported in Connecticut and fresh traces of the deadly bacteria were detected in the offices of two more senators in Washington.

Officials said a woman in her 90s was being treated for suspected inhalation anthrax. If confirmed, it would be the first US anthrax case since a New York hospital worker was diagnosed on Oct. 30 and died a day later.

Officials have been unable to identify who sent the letters, but are leaning toward a domestic rather than a foreign culprit.

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