The US bombing campaign in Afghanistan continued yesterday, with dozens of aircraft attacking Taliban targets even as more covert ground operations were under way, a senior defense official said.
In northern Kabul, a bomb hit and flattened two homes in the residential neighborhood of Khair Khana yesterday. Neighbors reported at least eight dead, while a doctor at the city's Wazir Akbar Khan hospital said 13 bodies had been brought there -- all apparently members of the same family.
PHOTO: AFP/US NAVY
One reporter at the scene in the Afghan capital saw bodies of five of the dead -- three women and two small children. Corpses of the others had been taken away, neighbors said.
"This pilot was like he was blind. There are no military bases here -- only innocent people," said one resident, Haziz Ullah.
Pentagon officials were not immediately available for comment after yesterday's incident, which came at a time when pressure was building for US President George W. Bush to keep his military campaign short and avoid civilian deaths.
At the APEC conference in Shanghai, Bush said the US had been "as careful as we possibly could" to avoid killing civilians.
Meanwhile, a senior administration official said yesterday that Bush last month signed an order directing the CIA to kill Osama bin Laden, leader of the al-Qaeda terrorist network, and destroy his communications, security apparatus and infrastructure in retaliation for the Sept. 11 attacks that killed thousands in New York and Washington.
Bush also added more than US$1 billion to the spy agency's war on terrorism, most of it for the new covert action.
Opening a new, more dangerous phase as the military campaign entered its third week, US ground forces began operations in Afghanistan. The campaign is designed to crush the Taliban movement that controls Afghanistan, including its mostly decrepit military forces, and the al-Qaeda terrorist network led by bin Laden.
The US saw its first acknowledged combat casualties Friday, when two soldiers were killed when their helicopter crashed in Pakistan.
Speaking at a news conference on Saturday, Air Force General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said the dark-of-night covert missions launched Friday by airborne Army Rangers were against two targets at separate locations: a Taliban-controlled airfield and a residence of Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar near the southern city of Kandahar.
The force of more than 100 Rangers has "accomplished our objectives," Myers said.
He described Taliban resistance as light. A small weapons cache discovered in a building at the airfield was destroyed, he said. Some of the weapons, including rocket-propelled grenades and ammunition, were displayed in a US combat video, shot with a night-vision lens and shown at the Pentagon news conference.
A senior Taliban leader, Mullah Amir Khan Muttaqi, said Taliban fighters drove off the US troops, and "the commando attack has failed."Also See Raids
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