U.S. hits Kabul positions in battle’s biggest strikes
U.S. hits Kabul positions in battle’s biggest strikes
10 missing, 20 injured after bomb goes astray, hits alliance village
By WILLIAM BRANIGIN
Washington Post
Sunday, October 28, 2001
Jabal Saraj, Afghanistan — U.S. warplanes hit Taliban positions in Kabul and on the front lines north of the capital with the heaviest airstrikes yet in the 3-week-old bombing campaign, sending huge fireballs into the sky and triggering bursts of Taliban mortar and rocket fire against the opposition Northern Alliance.
At least one U.S. bomb went astray, hitting a village in Northern Alliance territory less than two miles from the front line, according to journalists at the scene. Ten people were reported missing and 20 wounded when the bomb landed in the village of Ghanikhel in Kapisa province as night was falling.
Earlier, bombs struck a military compound across from the long- abandoned U.S. Embassy in Kabul and an ammunition depot on the eastern edge of the city, creating bright red explosions. Airstrikes also reportedly hit targets in the southern and central parts of the capital. Taliban fighters roamed the streets in pickup trucks mounted with anti-aircraft guns, putting up token resistance to the bombing.
Starting shortly after dawn and continuing into the evening, wave after wave of U.S. jets pounded the Taliban front-line trenches and gun emplacements that border the strategic Bagram air base, 25 miles north of Kabul, and prevented its use by the Northern Alliance.
The airstrikes drew paltry anti-aircraft fire from Taliban positions. But the hard-line Islamic movement retaliated by opening fire on the alliance’s front line on the northern side of the base, once the largest in Afghanistan and the landing zone for Soviet troops during their 1979 invasion.
“This is the heaviest day of air attacks on this front so far,” a Northern Alliance commander, who identified himself as Mustafa, told reporters.
A senior U.S. military officer confirmed that targeting of Taliban forces north of Kabul had been intensified in support of the Northern Alliance rebels. He said an increased number of B-1 and B-52 bombers had participated in the latest raids.
In seven days of front-line bombing, the United States has tried to help the Northern Alliance dislodge Taliban troops from Kabul and Mazar-e Sharif. So far, the Northern Alliance push has met with little success. A senior U.S. official said Friday that a contingent of U.S. Special Forces was helping the rebels plan a stepped up attack, but there was no report of unusual ground activity along the battlefront Saturday.
Stray bomb reported
At least one bomb went astray and struck a two-story house several miles behind the Northern Alliance lines. Angry villagers said 10 people were missing in the rubble and 20 were injured.
British Sky News broadcast pictures from the village showing a young girl with a bloodied face and hand, lying on the ground near piles of rubble and the remaining walls of a house on the edge of the village.
In Washington, Pentagon spokesmen said they had no information on a stray bomb.
When the Sky News TV crew arrived at the scene, the villagers heard the journalists speaking English on their satellite telephones and became hostile.
“Our families have lost loved ones,” a villager told them. “Now American families should lose loved ones.”
Security officials intervened and the journalists were allowed to leave.
It was at least the fourth time in seven days of U.S. airstrikes on Taliban positions north of Kabul that a bomb had fallen on the wrong side of the front line. There were no reports of casualties in the other incidents.
With key allies in the Middle East, and even on Capitol Hill, beginning to question the effectiveness of the campaign, President Bush held his daily National Security Council meeting by videoconference from Camp David.
Britain’s defense secretary, Geoff Hoon, said Saturday that Britain was prepared for a long and difficult war, as it began to mobilize 600 elite troops for an expected ground mission in Afghanistan.
Speaking to the British Broadcasting Corp. from Oman, Hoon declined to predict how long the military campaign against the Taliban would last, saying it “that will take as long as it takes.”
“I don’t think it would be sensible to make a judgment at this stage as to what the outcome is going to be.”
Preparing for long haul
After proclaiming that American airstrikes had “eviscerated” Taliban forces, Pentagon spokesmen are now trying to prepare the American public for a long haul by describing the Taliban as battle- hardened survivors.
To hear the United States’ most important military allies speak, the hope is not to wrap up the fighting before the Muslim holiday of Ramadan begins in mid-November but to try to prevail before Ramadan 2002.
“It is the most difficult operation ever undertaken by this country post-Korea,” Adm. Michael Boyce, the chief of the British Defense Staff, warned his nation on Friday. “It may not be the most dangerous because we are not facing an enemy like the Iraqi army, but it is the most difficult in terms of the objectives we’ve set ourselves.”
Pakistan’s intelligence service raised questions about the effectiveness of earlier bombing in southern and eastern parts of the country, according to a senior government official.
In its first comprehensive assessment of the U.S. bombing operation, the intelligence service has delivered a report to the country’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, concluding that the U.S.- led military campaign has not succeeded in diminishing the Taliban’s morale or their support in those regions, the official said.
In northwestern Pakistan, more than 5,000 people left the village of Temergarah in buses and trucks Saturday morning, bound for the Afghan frontier and vowing to fight a holy war against the U.S., news services reported. Hundreds were reported crossing into Afghanistan over mountains Saturday evening, Pakistani border police said.
The pounding U.S. military assault on and around Kabul came a day after the Taliban reported that it had captured and executed a renowned Afghan guerrilla commander, Abdul Haq, and two of his companions after they entered eastern Afghanistan from Pakistan to enlist Pashtun tribal leaders in efforts to create a post-Taliban government.
The reported executions dealt a serious blow to those efforts, limiting the options of anti-Taliban forces in recruiting prominent Pashtuns for the proposed new government. The Taliban is dominated by Pashtuns, the country’s largest ethnic group, while the Northern Alliance consists mainly of Tajiks and other ethnic minorities.
In Washington, about 300 people paraded through downtown carrying signs and shouting opposition to the U.S. military strikes in Afghanistan. The demonstration was organized by International ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism).
Knight Ridder News Service, the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
AFGHANISTAN
21ST DAY OF ATTACKS
SATURDAY’S TARGETS:
SAYOD: U.S. planes attacked at least five Taliban troop concentrations near Sayod, a village 25 miles north of Kabul.
KABUL: Bombs struck a military compound across from the U.S. Embassy and an ammunition deport on the eastern edge of the city. Airstrikes also reportedly hit targets in the southern and central parts of the capital.