Islamabad | Tuesday
US WARPLANES on Tuesday continued to pound Taliban targets in Afghanistan, killing ”tens of civilians,” as well as four Afghans employed by the United Nations, according to the militia.
In the first daytime raids of the three-day-old air assault, missiles are also said to have destroyed the former Kandahar home of Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, but he was unharmed, Taliban officials said.
The second night of air strikes took aim at areas around the capital, Kabul, and in northern Afghanistan, where the Northern Alliance has been battling Taliban soldiers, The Guardian newspaper reports.
Targets included the airport in Kabul and a hill where a TV transmission tower is located, according to the private Afghan Islamic Press agency in Pakistan.
Doctors said that four Afghan employees of a UN mine-clearing operation, whose office is near a radio tower, were killed in the raid on Kabul.
An employee of the agency, one of dozens working to remove the landmines that litter the country, said the group had stopped work after foreign deminers pulled out along with UN international staff after the September 11 attacks on the United States.
A United Nations official in Islamabad confirmed the reports.
”Tens of civilians have been killed in attacks on Afghan cities,” Taliban ambassador Abdul Salem Zaeef told a press conference here.
”This is open terrorism, this is not prosecuting so-called terrorists.
‘We are determined to offer two million martyrs in the name of Islam if need be’ – Taliban ambassador Abdul Salem Zaeef ”We are determined to offer two million martyrs in the name of Islam if need be,” he added.
The Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) agency quoted a Taliban official in Kandahar as saying one person was killed when fighter planes hit the airport and some suburbs.
Maiwand, 70 kilometers to the west, was also hit but there were no details.
The raids were confirmed by the Pentagon in Washington.
The Pentagon representative, Lieutenant Colonel George Rhynedance, refused to give details, but said that ”since the first strikes on Sunday afternoon, there has not been a break in operations.”
”Whether it is daytime or nighttime is immaterial,” he said.
The daylight sorties followed a second consecutive night of aerial attacks on Taliban positions around Kabul, and the cities of Jalalabad in the east and Mazar-i-Sharif in the north.
US officials have said attacks on the bases of Osama bin Laden and his Taliban protectors, blamed for last month’s attacks that killed 5 500 in the United States, would not be limited to nighttime operations, with US forces ready to strike whenever a target presents itself.
British forces that joined the opening night of air strikes on Sunday with missile launching submarines, played only a logistical support role on Monday, the Ministry of Defence in London said on Tuesday.
Five land-based B-1 and B-2 stealth bombers, as well as 10 carrier-based tactical aircraft and 15 Tomahawk cruise missiles were involved in Monday night’s raids, US officials said.
They said the targets were the same as Sunday, when US and British forces hit airfields, air defence units, communications centres and terrorist camps.
They said they were preparing to couple the military strikes with a second drop of 37 000 food packages for Afghan refugees in remote reaches of the country.
The Iranian news agency said Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, the head of the Taliban air force, was killed in Monday’s strikes, but there was no official confirmation of the report.
In Brussels, Nato announced it was redeploying its standing naval force to the eastern half of the Mediterranean Sea ”to demonstrate alliance resolve” as the US-led air strikes continue.
The naval force, consisting mainly of frigates from European Nato allies, had been on exercise around the Spanish island of Majorca since Friday.
China, which on Monday expressed its strongest support yet for the US-led anti-terror coalition, announced on Tuesday that it had closed its border with Afghanistan because of the air strikes, but only ”on a temporary basis.”
The government also closed Taxkorgan county, which borders Afghanistan, Pakistan and Tajikstan, to all foreign travellers and journalists, a representative said.
Anti-US demonstrations in the region continued, with three people reported killed and two injured in a clash between security forces and protesters, including Afghan refugees, in Kuchlak, north of Quetta, police said.
Police clashed with Islamist hardliners for the second day in a row on Tuesday at the gates of Quetta as they blocked entry of the southwestern Pakistani city to demonstrators coming from the countryside.
Angered by the sight of US or British jets flying high overhead –apparently heading for Kandahar, 180 km away – the demonstrators set fire to a police station before they were dispersed.
Concern remained high in the United States over possible new terror attacks, with fears of biological or chemical attacks.
The FBI was investigating a death from anthrax and a second case of infection by the rare bacteria in Florida.
”We have not ruled out anything at this time,” Attorney General John Ashcroft said. ”We regard this as an investigation that could become a criminal investigation.”
Hundreds of workers in the American Media Inc. building in Boca Raton were tested after a 63-year-old photo editor died from apparently inhaling anthrax spores, and a 73-year-old mailroom employee in the same building was hospitalised Monday with signs of infection by the same bacteria.
The FBI investigation to track the source of the bacteria stepped up amid news that at least one of the terrorists involved in the September 11 attacks, Mohammed Atta, had spent some time in Florida.
Atta had expressed deep interest in crop dusting airplanes, which experts fear could be used to spread lethal toxins. – Sapa-AFP, DMG reporter