Wed, Oct 10, 2001 page4

• US launches first daylight raids

  AIR CAMPAIGN Strikes on Kandahar came shortly after a lone jet dropped a bomb north of Kabul with the Taliban boasting that anti-aircraft gunners had driven away the attackers

  • AP
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  In the first daylight raids since the start of US-led attacks on Afghanistan, jets bombed the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar yesterday, and a lone plane dropped a bomb before dawn north of Kabul. The Taliban boasted that its anti-aircraft gunners had driven away the attackers.

  The morning's attacks followed a second night of US airstrikes that took aim at areas around the capital, Kabul, and in northern Afghanistan, where a rebel alliance has been battling Taliban troops.

  The US-led coalition launched the air campaign Sunday night after weeks of unsuccessful efforts to get the Taliban to hand over Osama bin Laden, key suspect in the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

  

  In this US Air Force handout photo, aviation workers on the USS Enterprise in the northern Indian Ocean move ordnance into place as aircraft are readied for strike missions on Sunday against targets in Afghanistan.

  PHOTO: AP

  In Kabul, farmer Adam Khan and his family of five were fleeing yesterday on a truck piled high with belongings, heading out of the capital to an eastern district to escape more airstrikes. They had been sleeping in their basement during the bombardment, he said.

  ``All night the women and children were crying,'' he said.``They were very worried -- scared.''

  Targets in Monday night's raids included the airport in Kabul and a hill where a TV transmission tower is located, according to the private Afghan Islamic Press agency in Islamabad, Pakistan. Four UN Afghan workers, whose office is near a radio tower, were reported killed in the raid, doctors said.

  In Washington, the Pentagon said all its planes returned safely.

  There was no immediate confirmation that the aircraft carrying out yesterday morning's raids were part of the US-led coalition, though it appeared likely. Kandahar's location in the south of Afghanistan is far from any airstrips belonging to the anti-Taliban northern opposition, and the opposition's aircraft capability is limited.

  The Taliban held the US responsible for the latest strikes.

  ``This morning ... American aircraft made three strikes, but due to the use of anti-aircraft guns, these aircraft fled,'' a Taliban spokesman, Mullah Abdul Hai Muttmain, told the Afghan Islamic Press. He said there was no immediate word on injuries or damage.

  The strike on Kandahar, the seat of the Islamic Taliban militia that rules Afghanistan, came shortly after a lone, unidentified jet screamed through the early dawn sky over the capital, Kabul, dropping a bomb north of the city near the airport.

  After Monday night's strikes, doctors at Kabul's Wazir Akbar Khan Hospital, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said four men were killed and a fifth was treated and released. Officials at the scene said the victims were UN workers who cleared anti-personnel mines in Kabul, one of the world's most heavily mined cities.

  Taliban spokesman Muttmain, contacted by telephone from southern Kandahar before the latest raid, said Monday's night's assault was less severe than the first wave of attacks by the US-British coalition. Those attacks, which began late Sunday, killed 20 civilians, the Taliban claimed.

  The attacks ``didn't hit any military targets,'' he said. ``The people's morale is high.''

  Muttmain said fighter jets targeted Kunduz and Mazar-e-Sharif in northern Afghanistan, as well as Kabul and Kandahar.

  Early yesterday, sitting in front of a collapsed two-story building in Kabul's eastern Macroyan neighborhood, Mohammed Afzl wept. His brother was one of the four workers killed, and he waited for bulldozers to clear the rubble and remove the bodies.

  ``My brother is buried under there,'' he said. ``What can we do? Our lives are ruined.''

  The US has emphasized that it is not targeting civilians in its military campaign. The mine-clearing office was located in a building near a Taliban radio tower.

  Muttmain denied as ``absolutely false'' a report by Iran's official news agency that a senior Taliban leader was killed in Monday's assault. Aviation Minister Akhtar Mohammed Mansour ``is fine,'' Muttmain said.

  As the raids began, lights went out in Kabul, and Taliban radio ordered people to close blinds, shut off lights and stay indoors.

  US Air Force General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the fresh bombardment Monday night was accompanied by a renewed air drop of humanitarian assistance. Humanitarian groups have said, however, that such airdrops are much less effective than road deliveries.

  In the attacks, five long-range bombers -- a pair of B-2 stealth bombers flying from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, and three B-1B's from the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia -- joined 10 strike planes launched from aircraft carriers in the Arabian Sea. They targeted air defense and other military targets across Afghanistan.

  Two US Navy ships, the destroyers USS John Paul Jones and USS McFaul, and one submarine launched a total of 15 Tomahawk cruise missiles.

  Britain, which participated in the first wave of assaults Sunday, did not take part in Monday's follow-up, Prime Minister Tony Blair said from London.

  Before Monday's attacks began, President Bush vowed to be ``relentless'' in fighting terrorism ``on all fronts.'' And in an indication the US might eventually want to expand the military operation, Washington notified the UN Security Council on Monday that its counter-terrorism attacks may be extended beyond Afghanistan.

  Before the night assault Monday, the Taliban released a British journalist to Pakistani authorities. Yvonne Ridley, a reporter for a London newspaper, had been held for 10 days by the Taliban after sneaking into Afghanistan.
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