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U.S. pummels Taliban lines
Compiled from Times wires
© St. Petersburg Times, JABAL SARAJ, Afghanistan -- The Pentagon turned to the Air Force's venerable workhorse along a key Afghan front line on Wednesday, sending two B-52s for the first time against Taliban positions near Bagram, 22 miles north of the Afghan capital, Kabul. One mountainside erupted in smoke and dust as a string of 15 bombs struck it in rapid succession, while the explosion of another bomb sent a tower of black smoke billowing into the sky. At the Pentagon, officials responded with caution to questions about the first evidence of saturation bombing in the U.S. campaign. "It is fair to say that we are using both precision and non-precision weapons while attacking Taliban forces," said Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem, senior operations officer for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The bombs were directed at some 6,000 Taliban militia thought to be dug in along a 20-mile front facing an estimated 4,000 opposition troops of the Northern Alliance. The biggest explosions were thought to be from 1,000-pound bombs aimed at Taliban bunkers. There were no immediate reports on casualties. The saturation, or carpet, bombing suggests that the U.S. strategy is to smooth the way for a ground offensive toward Kabul by the alliance, which some commanders have hinted may be launched within days. Pentagon officials said Wednesday that the strikes have set the stage not only for the Northern Alliance to launch its drive but also for the United States to send additional ground forces into the embattled country after the snow melts in the spring. Under this scenario, the opposition forces -- with U.S. help -- would move to open the road linking Kabul to Uzbekistan, which neighbors Afghanistan to the north. In an coming trip through the region, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is expected to seek permission to launch aircraft, armor and soldiers from several countries bordering Afghanistan. Rumsfeld is due to meet with leaders of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Pakistan over the next several days, with U.S. use of airfields and military bases expected to be high on his agenda. Until Wednesday, only smaller F/A-18 Hornet fighter-bombers had been used against Taliban positions near Bagram, in strikes that rarely lasted more than an hour. Pressed on whether the United States was dropping large loads of bombs from B-52s against concentrations of Taliban troops, Stufflebeem responded: "That is part of our campaign, it is part of our capability. And we do use it and have used it and will use it when we need to." However, he suggested the term "carpet bombing" is outdated and inaccurate since the B-52s have been modernized since the Vietnam war to carry guided missiles as well as unguided bombs. "It's an old expression," he said. "Heavy bombers have the capacity to carry large loads of weapons and often times if the target presents itself ... it's possible to release an entire load of bombs at once." The contrails of the B-52s could be seen for dozens of miles across the Shomali Plain and the foothills of the Hindu Kush mountains, north of Kabul. U.S. warplanes also struck Taliban positions near Mazar-e-Sharif, where Northern Alliance forces have been waging an intermittent offensive. The opposition fighters cheered the heavy bombing. "This went very well. We liked this very much," Kudratulla Umar, an officer with alliance forces stalled about 9 miles outside Mazar-e-Sharif, said by telephone. Umar said alliance forces are ready to try to capture the city but are waiting for a signal from the United States. When that happens, he said, his troops will move in on foot. Umar said the alliance is waiting for the U.S. bombardment to destroy the tanks and heavier weapons arrayed by the Taliban to protect the city. Even as the air war escalated Wednesday, Taliban vehicles were seen driving in and out of the bombing zone north of Kabul, and their forces fired rockets into Northern Alliance territory from an area that had been heavily bombed only minutes earlier. "They didn't hit the targets exactly," the local alliance commander, Halozai Ahmed Ali, said as he watched the bombs explode about 21/2 miles away. "Three bombs missed, but two bombs were pretty close to the Taliban's camps." The commander added that while Wednesday "was better than other days, it's not clear to me how many Taliban (loyalists) have been killed. They change their positions each time." After weeks of complaints from the Northern Alliance that the U.S. airstrikes on the Kabul front were too weak and infrequent, Ali said the B-52 strikes, followed by wave after wave of bombing runs, were a welcome change. "If they continue for a week or more like this, it's possible the Taliban will be defeated on this front," he said with caution. The Pentagon said the air campaign had virtually crippled the ability of the Taliban to coordinate its movements or keep itself supplied with food and ammunition. "The centralized command and control" of Taliban forces "has been severely degraded" by the bombing, Stufflebeem said. It is now "extremely difficult for them to communicate with one another." In Kandahar, the spiritual headquarters of the Taliban, Western reporters were shown a Red Crescent clinic that a doctor said had been bombed before dawn Wednesday, killing at least 11 people and wounding at least six. Journalists found the clinic heavily damaged but saw no bodies. A crowd gathered at the clinic during the reporters' visit and chanted such slogans as "Down with Bush" and "Down with America." PAKISTANIS QUESTIONED: Pakistan has arrested three of the country's leading nuclear scientists and held them for questioning for most of last week in connection with U.S. concerns that nuclear weapons technology could have found its way into the hands of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, officials in Pakistan said Wednesday. The officials provided no details and would not say whether they had turned up information to confirm U.S. concerns. Nor would they comment on Pakistani newspapers' reports that FBI and CIA officials were involved in questioning the men.
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From the Times wire desk
From the AP |
