Jalalabad, Kabul | Wednesday
FIFTEEN people have been killed by the United States when bombs destroyed a mosque and surrounding houses in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad, the Taliban’s ambassador to Pakistan told a press conference on Thursday.
”In this mosque which was demolished by a US attack 15 people have reported to have been martyred and also four houses have been destroyed,” Abdul Salam Zaeef said.
Earlier, the Taliban’s Education Minister, Amir Khan Mutaqqi, said the mosque was destroyed in heavy overnight bombing by US forces that targeted Jalalabad, the nation’s capital, Kabul, and the regime’s southern stronghold of Kandahar.
Meanwhile, in the fourth day of airstrikes on Thursday, American aircraft pounded Kandahar in southern Afghanistan, and are now said to be targeting underground bunkers, The Washington Post reports.
US commanders have ordered that 5 000-pound (2267kg)-laser-guided bombs be dropped on the town, in an attempt to penetrate underground bunkers and kill the Taliban leadership that are thought to be hiding there.
‘You use it when you want the earth to shake, when you want to have a real effect,’ US defence official commenting on the use of huge bombs
The ”bunker-busting” bombs are designed to pierce underground reinforced strongholds.
”You use it when you want the earth to shake, when you want to have a real effect,” the newspaper quoted a defence official as saying.
The paper said that the heavy bombs were dropped by B2 bombers flying from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri. The paper said the B2s flew to their targets, then continued to the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia, where fresh crews took over for the return flights to Whiteman. The flights took 44 hours.
Although the Pentagon publicly was silent about the attacks, officials speaking on condition of anonymity said the bombs would be used against ”leadership targets.”
A US official speaking on condition of anonymity said on Wednesday that two adult male relatives of Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar were killed in bombing strikes on the leader’s home in Kandahar.
The latest round of bombing has sent the city’s civilians fleeing east toward the Pakistani border.
Refugees arriving in the border city of Chaman said on Thursday that recent bombardments have been heavier than earlier strikes.
In Kabul, Taliban information ministry representative Abdul Hanan Himan said he had no information about casualties in the latest strikes of Kandahar, but said at least three people died in cities throughout Afghanistan as the result of the US strikes on Wednesday night.
A man arriving in the border town of Chaman in Pakistan said he had seen at least 10 people killed and 30 injured in Kandahar during bombings over the past four days.
Ekhtiar Mohammed, who works at a brick kiln in Kandahar, said at least two neighbourhoods had been attacked since the raids began – one near the airport and the other close to the tiny village of Maiwan in the mountains around the city.
Another said some bombs in recent days had been hitting populated areas.
”It’s not true that the Americans have only been bombing military targets. Many of the bombs are dropping on residential neighbourhoods,” said Naseebullah Khan, who works at a factory near Kandahar’s airport, a repeated US target.
US Defence Department officials said that their aircraft continued to drop food into Afghanistan, but the Washington Post said the administration had acknowledged that the airdrops would do little to save about 1,5-million Afghanistan citizens who are at risk of starvation by the end of the winter.
The newspaper quoted a defence official as saying that the first American death during the military campaign occurred on Tuesday when a serviceman at a US base in Qatar, was killed in a forklift accident.
Meanwhile, in the US, authorities say there are 4 815 people missing at the World Trade Center and 422 confirmed dead. Death tolls are unchanged at Pentagon (189) and at Pennsylvania crash site (44). – Sapa, DMG reporter