- KABUL (Reuters) - Afghan
cities shook under the force of a fresh U.S. aerial bombardment on Friday
as Washington acknowledged that special forces had joined the military
campaign to flush out Osama bin Laden and punish his Taliban
protectors.
-
- With Taliban officials saying that the death toll from
the air strikes had risen sharply, the United States began broadcasting
propaganda messages urging war-weary Afghans to resist their Taliban rulers
and give up bin Laden.
-
- Kabul residents emerged from their flimsy homes on Friday
to count the human cost after three waves of attacks during the night and
a series of powerful blasts in the city center.
-
- Taliban spokesman Abdul Hai Mutmaen said between 600
and 900 people were killed or missing in the air strikes, which began on
October 7. Witnesses said many victims were civilians.
-
- After pounding major Afghan cities for 13 days with the
biggest bombs residents of this war-ravaged country have ever known, the
United States broadcast messages to Afghans urging them to keep away from
Taliban military installations.
-
- The United States deployed four slow-moving EC-130E
"Commando
Solo" psychological operations aircraft, broadcasting in local Afghan
dialects, as the center piece of a new stage in the war and saying for
the first time Afghans could expect to see U.S. troops on the
ground.
-
- "We do not wish to harm you," one broadcast
said. "Try to find ways to ignore the Taliban and Osama bin Laden's
requests for help and do not give them food or shelter."
-
- The broadcasts vow to give no quarter to Taliban soldiers
and al Qaeda supporters who do not surrender.
-
- A U.S. defense official said special forces were on
Afghan
soil and Afghans were advised that after their arrival, the safest place
to be would be in their homes.
-
- "Attention. People of Afghanistan, United States
forces will be moving through your area... Please for your own safety stay
off bridges and roadways and do not interfere with our troops or military
operations," the broadcasts advise.
-
- BIN LADEN SAFE
-
- Kabul was not the only target. Bases around the Taliban's
southern stronghold of Kandahar and the eastern city of Jalalabad -- hub
of the country's guerrilla training camps -- were pounded through the
night.
-
- Taliban spokesman Mutmaen said the death toll was rising
sharply from the bombardment.
-
- "The number of casualties ranges between 600 and
900 dead, we consider those missing under the rubble among the dead,"
he told Qatar's al-Jazeera television in a videophone interview from an
undisclosed location.
-
- "And don't ask me about the number of wounded,
because
it is in the thousands and I don't have a figure for that," he
added.
-
- In attacks on Thursday in Kabul, witnesses and officials
said seven passers-by were killed when a bomb hit an ammunition dump in
Kabul. In other areas of Kabul, terrified residents raced for cover as
two bombs hit a Taliban building and another struck the ammunition storage
area north of the city.
-
- Kabul resident Nazirullah mourned over five badly damaged
bodies of his relatives, killed at their home in the eastern suburb of
Qalaye Zaman Khan. A Taliban military base lies a few hundred meters
(yards)
away.
-
- "It was around 12 o'clock when the bomb hit here.
My wife, sister, brother, sister-in-law and mother died in it," he
said.
-
- But there was no sign the raids had brought U.S. forces
near Saudi-born radical bin Laden, the man held responsible by Washington
for the devastating September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and
the Pentagon.
-
- Bin Laden and Taliban leaders were safe as of Thursday,
said Education Minister and top government spokesman Amir Khan
Muttaqi.
-
- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the attacks were
driving some guerrillas of bin Laden's al Qaeda -- the base -- network
out of hiding and into American bombsights.
-
- Washington accuses Bin Laden and his al Qaeda network,
centered on Afghanistan and believed to span 30 countries, of staging the
September 11 suicide hijacking attacks that killed more than 5,000
Americans
and foreign nationals.
-
- AL QAEDA THREAT
-
- As the toll mounted, a report by the London-based Islamic
Observation Center quoted al Qaeda military chief Abu Hafs al-Masri as
saying Afghans would drag slain U.S. troops through the streets, rekindling
memories of Washington's abortive 1993 involvement in Somalia.
-
- "America will only be certain about its mistaken
calculations after its soldiers are dragged in Afghanistan as they were
in Somalia," he was quoted as saying in the report, which was obtained
by Reuters in Cairo.
-
- The whereabouts of Abu Hafs, nom de guerre of Egyptian
radical Mohamed Atef, are unknown. Atef is believed to be bin Laden's
number
two in al Qaeda.
-
- Despite the tightening noose with bombing from above
and the Afghan opposition saying it is advancing on the ground in the
north,
the Taliban dismissed reports of divisions in their ranks.
-
- Education Minister Muttaqi rebuffed rumors that Foreign
Minister Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil had left the country or that rifts had
opened up in the Taliban.
-
- "There is no rift. He is doing his normal work but
due to the failure of communication links with Kandahar, he has not been
able to give statements so far," he told Reuters.
-
- Both Muttaqi and another Taliban spokesman dismissed
reports the Afghan opposition was making advances toward the strategic
northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, where the United States says Taliban
military
bases have come under fierce attack.
-
- An opposition Northern Alliance commander said the
different
factions within the Alliance were massing their forces for a joint
advance.
-
- "We are five km (three miles) from the airport of
Mazar-i-Sharif," commander Ustad Attah told Reuters by telephone from
near the frontline.
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