Kabul | Tuesday
AFGHAN militia forces claimed to have made significant gains against Osama bin Laden’s embattled forces in the Tora Bora region of the country on Monday, as US Marines fanned out from their base near Kandahar to cut off the escape routes of fleeing al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters.
Local commanders laying siege to the area where a hard core group of al-Qaeda fighters, and possibly their leader Osama bin Laden, are holed up in a cave riddled mountain complex, said they had captured large chunks of territory and all of al-Qaeda’s heavy weapons positions.
”We control all of the Melawa and Tora Bora area, except for one place,” military commander Hazrat Ali told reporters, adding that al-Qaeda had left behind their dead as they retreated to higher positions.
The push forward came on the seventh day of a fierce offensive by Afghan militiamen backed by US airstrikes aimed at collapsing cave entrances and, sealing al-Qaeda forces inside.
US military sources were unable to corroborate the claims, and US Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz stressed that while intelligence reports had put the Saudi dissident at that location, there was no exact fix on the whereabouts of the alleged terrorist mastermind at this point.
US forces dropped one of the largest conventional bombs in the US arsenal, a 15 000 lb daisy-cutter bomb, on a cave in the White Mountains on the country’s eastern border on Sunday, but it was still too early to evaluate the damage, officials said.
”It’s still a hot area, … and so, with the fighting that’s been going on, it’s been difficult to get into that area to confirm exactly what happened on the ground,” said Rear Admiral John Stufflebeem.
Meanwhile, further south, US Marines set up a staging area close to Kandahar to block the escape routes of al-Qaeda forces fleeing the city after it fell to opposition Northern Alliance forces on Friday.
Many al-Qaeda fighters and some Taliban are believed to be still in the area.
The Taliban’s one-eyed supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar appears to be moving around Kandahar province with a small band of followers, Pentagon representative Victoria Clarke said, but acknowledged: ”We don’t know with precision where he is.”
In London, defence sources suggested that the first troops from a multinational security force for Afghanistan — agreed last week in Bonn — could deploy later this week or early next week.
Up to 3 000 British troops could be deployed to the region in what is likely to be the lead contingent of the mooted peacekeeping force, according to British news reports.
An announcement is expected within the next few days, possibly as early as Tuesday when US Secretary of State Colin Powell visits.
However the Northern Alliance now in power in Afghanistan threw a potential spanner into the works when it insisted it would not withdraw all its soldiers from Kabul.
It had pledged in last week’s historic inter-Afghan accord to demilitarise the city before the deployment of UN-mandated peacekeepers.
In the first clear sign of resistance to the proposed force, a top aide to Defence Minister General Mohammad Qasim Fahim said the peacekeepers would not be allowed to patrol Kabul.
That, he said, was a task reserved for Afghan security forces.
Fahim had insisted last week that any force should limit itself to guarding government offices.
Under the power-sharing accord struck in Bonn last week, which will see an interim government take power on December 22, the UN-mandated force was to be deployed in Kabul and surroundings before spreading to other centres.
The agreement also stipulates the demilitarisation of Kabul.
A ministry of defence representative said it was ”absolutely fundamental” to get the agreement of the Afghans for British participation.
”Unless we had that agreement there would be no question of any deployment at all,” he said.
Back in the United States, on the eve of the third month anniversary of the September 11 attacks, the Bush administration debated whether to go public with a video they said tied the Saudi dissident to the assaults on New York and Washington.
US President George W Bush and his National Security Council were balancing their desire to share the information with concerns that releasing the recording could compromise intelligence gathering and give the Saudi-born militant publicity, a representative said.
”If it can be released, it’s going to be released in a way that can serve both the public needs and the needs of intelligence and the needs of defence,” Bush representative Ari Fleischer told reporters.
”There’s no question that the tapes back up what you all know and have heard repeatedly for months and what the world knows, which is that Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaeda network were behind this attack,” said Fleischer.
The president, who both watched the videotape and read a transcript, could decide as early as Monday whether to make it public, officials said.
US President George W Bush will hold a special White House ceremony to honour the roughly 3 300 victims killed in the airplane hijacking attacks three months to the day of the worst strike ever on American soil.
The event will centre on the playing of the US national anthem at 8:46 am (1346 GMT), the exact moment at which the first of two hijacked jets slammed into the World Trade Center’s south tower.
Simultaneous events are slated for New York City, the Pentagon, which was later hit by another jet, and in Pennsylvania, where a fourth airplane crashed after passengers scuffled with terrorists.
”Nasa will hold a special event in space where the United States and Russia will play the national anthems of our two nations to commemorate the attack,” Fleischer told reporters. – Sapa-AFP