US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld traveled to Afghanistan yesterday amid the intensifying hunt for Osama bin Laden and a fresh drive against Taliban militants threatening landmark summer elections.
Meanwhile, gunmen ambushed Afghan aid workers, killing five and wounding three, on a road northeast of Kabul on Wednesday, the worst such attack since the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001.
Rumsfeld visited troops in the southern city of Kandahar and had lunch in the Afghan capital, Kabul, with President Hamid Karzai during his one-day trip.
"He's coming to get a ground assessment of operations here," US military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Matt Beevers said.
Rumsfeld and Karzai would discuss the American-led war on terrorism, including the pursuit of bin Laden and other top fugitives, Karzai's spokesman Jawed Ludin said.
The US military has said it is confident it will catch bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader, as well as Taliban chief Mullah Mohammad Omar before the year is out.
That optimism has sparked intense speculation about the fugitives' whereabouts -- and a slew of reports that they have been tracked down in the rugged border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
"We believe Osama bin Laden is still around the area," Ludin said.
The US military is planning a new push to improve security across the unstable border regions and is rolling out a plan that involves delivering millions in badly needed reconstruction aid to remote areas where a bloody Taliban insurgency is strongest, a move the military says should yield better intelligence on top fugitives.
Western aid workers said the Afghans killed in the attack on Wednesday belonged to a local non-governmental organization called the Serai Development Foundation, which is involved in rebuilding roads and providing clean water.
Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali told a news briefing the ambush occurred between Sarobi, about 60km east of Kabul, and Tagab, about 30km north of Sarobi.
He called the attackers "criminals and terrorists."
"These kind of people don't have any place in Afghanistan," Jalali said.
The incident is the latest in a string of attacks on foreign and Afghan aid groups providing vital assistance in the war-shattered country.
Less than two weeks ago, suspected Taliban gunmen shot dead four Afghan deminers in an ambush in the west of the country.
Last year, the Taliban said they had killed an Afghan aid worker because such people were American agents who deserved to die.
More than 550 people, including many rebels, have been killed since early August. The instability has undermined vital assistance efforts in the south and east and threatens to delay the country's first democratic elections scheduled for June.
Barbara Stapleton, advocacy officer of Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief, said Wednesday's was the worst single attack since US and opposition forces overthrew the Taliban in late 2001 and it showed the urgent need to boost provincial security.
Stapleton said the attacks showed that the security policy of the US and its allies -- stationing small, joint civilian military Provincial Reconstruction Teams around the country, rather than large bodies of peacekeepers, was flawed.
RSS