Mail & Guardian reporters and agencies
American warplanes were sighted over Kabul on Thursday as the United States launched its first daylight raid on the capital.
Anti-aircraft fire rang out on the fifth day of military strikes on Afghanistan, a month on from the attacks on New York and Washington that prompted the “war on terrorism”.
The Taliban claimed that more than 115 people had been killed by US bombs on Wednesday night and Thursday, and accused the Pentagon of deliberately targeting civilians.
The regime said the figure included 100 dead around the eastern city of Jalalabad and another 15 who died when a missile struck a mosque. None of the claims could be independently confirmed, as foreign journalists are barred from Taliban-held territory. One report put the death toll as high as 140.
US jets pounded Kabul on Wednesday and Thursday, and explosions thundered around a Taliban military academy, artillery units and suspected terrorist training camps. Taliban gunners returned fire with anti-aircraft weapons and the airport was said to be ablaze.
In neighbouring Pakistan government officials confirmed that US personnel have arrived on the ground, and that the Americans have been granted use of several Pakistani air bases. More than 15 US military aircraft have arrived over the past two days at a base at Jacobabad, 480km north-east of the port city of Karachi.
At the border crossing into Pakistan refugees fleeing Afghanistan reported that the strikes were escalating.
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said that Afghanistan’s Taliban regime has been “weakened” by concerted international pressure and the military action. He added that the regime was facing defections from its less fanatical members.
Straw said that even before bombing started there were signs of “fracturing” between the religious fanatics at the heart of the Taliban.