Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
© St. Petersburg Times, published October 24, 2001
AINGARI, Afghanistan -- Taliban forces are taking cover among the civilian population of Kabul and stashing their military equipment in mosques and schools to avoid U.S. airstrikes, according to refugees who have fled the capital in recent days.
Allied planes have attacked targets in and around Kabul nearly every day since the U.S.-led airstrikes began Oct. 7. The attacks are aimed at Taliban military sites. But the refugees said Tuesday that many Taliban fighters are now hiding among civilians in the capital.
"The airstrikes destroyed some (military) sites, but now the Taliban come at night to the houses of the people and bring their equipment into civilian places," said Mohammad Ali, 50, a jobless former bus driver in Kabul who crossed the Taliban and opposition Northern Alliance front lines Tuesday morning, walking for six hours to reach this alliance-controlled village.
"They come at night to schools and mosques and universities where there are lots of trees," Ali said. At one mosque at Kotal-e Khairkhana, a residential area in the northern part of Kabul, the Taliban has parked 10 tanks inside the compound, he said.
"The people are very angry and worried," fearing that the tanks will attract U.S. airstrikes, he said. "For this reason, they are not going to the mosque to pray."
The U.S. bombing campaign Tuesday targeted Taliban front lines north of Kabul in attacks the Northern Alliance hopes will open the way for an advance on the city. But Taliban troops held their ground, launching rockets and mortars toward alliance positions.
The intensity of the U.S. airstrikes was similar to the previous day's, in which about 60 carrier-based strike aircraft, 10 long-range bombers and 10 land-based strike aircraft hit 11 planned target areas. The attacks appeared to resume early today, as sounds of heavy bombardment were heard near Kabul's airport.
While the front-line strikes that began Sunday are often described as intense outside the country, to Afghans they are intermittent pinpricks. The raids usually last less than an hour and have occurred only twice a day, at most.
That leaves the Taliban troops time to regroup and take revenge on Afghan civilians, said Bari Yali, a shop owner who survived a Taliban rocket attack on Charikar, 30 miles north of Kabul. Taliban rockets landed in the middle of a crowded noontime bazaar, killing a tea seller and a shopkeeper and injuring 14 other people.
"As long as the Taliban are in these mountains, they will continue to attack us," Yali, 30, said as he stood next to a small crater that a rocket had dug in a narrow dirt alley. "They attacked Charikar because the Americans bombed them. If the American planes don't bomb constantly, the Taliban will only fire at us more and more."
American warplanes also set fire to Taliban oil supplies in the southern city of Kandahar.
In Washington, Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem, deputy director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that U.S. airstrikes have hit every known training camp of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorist ring and that bombing has eliminated most of the Taliban regime's air defenses and communications. As a result, he said, the Taliban and al-Qaida are dispersing what's left of their forces "to save them."
"There aren't going to be any camps that we're going to allow them to use, and when we find them, we'll strike them," Stufflebeem said. He said he did not know how many al-Qaida training camps had been hit, but British officials said nine had been destroyed.
Stufflebeem also cast doubt on the possibility of ending the air campaign before winter. "We don't think that's realistic."
In fact, Pentagon officials told Knight Ridder that winter will be an ally of the U.S. campaign. The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that as the bombing campaign steadily deprives Taliban and al-Qaida forces of the shelter, warmth, food, fuel and ammunition they will need during the cold months, the United States will provide the Northern Alliance with the equipment, ammunition and food needed to fight.
U.S. officials have said repeatedly through 17 days of bombing in Afghanistan that care is taken to avoid striking targets that may result in civilian casualties. But on Tuesday the Pentagon acknowledged two instances over the weekend in which errant bombs apparently hit civilian areas.
On Sunday morning Afghanistan time, a Navy F-14 Tomcat dropped two 500-pound bombs that mistakenly hit a residential area northwest of Kabul, the Afghan capital, Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said. The intended targets were military vehicles parked about a half-mile away. She said she did not know how many people may have been hurt or killed.
In the second instance late Sunday afternoon, a Navy F/A-18 Hornet dropped a 1,000-pound bomb in an open field near a seniors' home outside the western city of Herat, Clarke said. The intended target was a vehicle storage building at an army barracks about 100 yards from the facility. Indications are that the weapon's guidance system malfunctioned, she said.
Clarke said she was not certain whether the second incident corresponded to one reported by the United Nations, which said U.S. bombs hit a military hospital near Herat. The Taliban had said a strike Monday hit a Herat hospital and killed at least 100 people.
"We regret any loss of civilian life. U.S. forces are intentionally striking only military and terrorist targets. We take great care in our targeting process to avoid civilian casualties," Clarke said.
The Pentagon also disclosed new details about a mishap during Saturday's commando raids into Afghanistan, in which an airfield was seized and documents taken from a compound that included a residence of Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar.
An Army MH-47 special operations helicopter struck an unknown barrier while it was taking off from Afghanistan after the raid, shearing off its front landing gear, Clarke said. It continued the flight without incident and returned safely to an undisclosed base. No one aboard was injured.
The chopper's wheels were displayed on television by the Taliban, which claimed to have shot down an American helicopter and foiled Saturday's raid.
The Pentagon also disclosed that on Saturday a U.S. helicopter that had picked up a crippled Army Black Hawk helicopter that had crashed hours earlier in Pakistan came under hostile fire while refueling at a Pakistani airfield. Clarke would not say where the chopper was when it met gunfire. She said it aborted the refueling, returned fire and left the area. There were no U.S. casualties.
TASHKENT, Uzbekistan -- A top general of the Afghanistan resistance said he is directing airstrikes by American planes onto Taliban positions, and with their help has repelled a Taliban offensive near Mazar-e-Sharif, a key northern battleground.
The account by Gen. Abdurrashid Dostum indicates stepped-up coordination between U.S. aerial attacks and the fighters of the Northern Alliance, who had been complaining of only token assistance from the United States.
"It's really a big help," Dostum said in an interview Tuesday by satellite telephone. He said he makes a daily list of targets, and "American planes are attacking exactly where we request. They are precise; they don't hit anywhere else."
If Mazar-e-Sharif falls to the Northern Alliance, much of the northern half of the country can be wrested from Taliban control. It would also open a military and humanitarian supply route from Uzbekistan.