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Bombs kill top terrorist
©Los Angeles Times A top aide and confidant to Osama bin Laden was reportedly killed in a U.S. air attack earlier this week, said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who also disclosed Friday that American special forces troops are now engaged in fierce firefights on the ground in Afghanistan. Mohammed Atef, the top military strategist in the al-Qaida terrorist network, was thought to have been killed when a bomb struck a headquarters building in or near the capital, Kabul, Rumsfeld and other officials said. They said they lacked confirmation of the intelligence reports, which came from intercepted phone conversations among people connected with the organization. But Rumsfeld said, "The reports I've received seem authoritative." The death, if confirmed, would be an important development in the U.S. effort to destroy leaders of the organization responsible for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States. Rumsfeld disclosed the development as he shared with reporters accounts and photographs of U.S. special forces troops on horseback in camouflage robes making their way across Afghanistan. The Washington Post reported, quoting senior U.S. officials, that about 300 special forces troops are in Afghanistan. About 200 are in the north, where the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance exercises the greatest control. But the remaining 100 troops -- as well as commandos from coalition partners -- are operating in the confused and fluid battlefield of southern Afghanistan. Rumsfeld said the teams in the south are working to foment anti-Taliban rebellion by Pashtun tribal leaders. In addition, he said, "They're looking for information, they're interdicting roads, they're killing Taliban that won't surrender and al-Qaida that are trying to move from one place to another." Rumsfeld said the teams were also scouting potential landing fields for U.S. and coalition aircraft. Asked if the troops were engaged in ground combat, Rumsfeld said: "The answer is yes. ... In the south, they've gone into places and met resistance and dealt with it." No U.S. soldiers have been killed in the region, other than the two who died in a helicopter accident in Pakistan, which the Pentagon previously disclosed, Rumsfeld said. His comments came as the Taliban appeared to be close to ceding power in Kandahar, the city in southern Afghanistan that is the home of their supreme leader and the center of the regime's power. The Afghan Islamic Press, which is close to the Taliban, reported late Friday that Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar had agreed to leave his headquarters at Kandahar. The Pakistan-based agency said Omar had decided to head for the mountains and was handing control to Mullah Naqib Ullah and Hajji Bashar, two commanders who fought in the war against the Soviet Union and were founding supporters of the Taliban. Neither man has recently been active in the Taliban, and they may in turn pass power quickly to anti-Taliban commanders from southern Afghanistan with more credible credentials. At a Pentagon briefing, Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem said bluntly that he didn't believe the report and asserted that Afghanistan remains a "hostile environment." In Quetta, the Pakistani city closest to Kandahar, it appeared clear Friday that intense discussions were under way between the Taliban and Pashtun tribal elders. But there is some uncertainty about how easy it would be for the Taliban to hand over power. In its ranks are hundreds of Arab fighters who have nowhere to go if the Taliban gave up Kandahar and would be clear targets for both the Americans and for anti-Taliban Pashtuns who have long wanted Arab fighters to leave the country. Late Friday, the Pentagon disclosed that a U.S. bomb landed near or on a mosque in the Afghan city of Khost, on the first day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. The mosque was damaged, but the extent of the damage or any injuries isn't known, the Pentagon said. According to the U.S. Central Command, it was one of three laser-guided 500-pound bombs dropped by two Air Force planes Friday. Two struck an al-Qaida facility but the third bomb "suffered a guidance malfunction," the Pentagon said. An earlier airstrike is thought to have killed Atef, 44, an Egyptian under indictment in connection with the August 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. He has been an aide to bin Laden for more than 10 years, and a daughter is married to one of bin Laden's sons. Defense officials portrayed the loss of Atef as both a personal loss for bin Laden and a significant setback for al-Qaida. Stufflebeem said his death would mean that bin Laden "no longer has a principal assistant that he has been counting on for developing military or terrorist operations." He said that the building where Atef was struck had been targeted as one of a number of "command and control" structures in the area. This strike was separate from another, on Tuesday, that the Pentagon said killed several officials of the Taliban and perhaps al-Qaida. Rumsfeld said "there's every reason to believe" bin Laden is in Afghanistan. But he said it is possible that the terrorist leader still has the use of one or more helicopters that he could use to flee. "I don't doubt for a minute that there are some well hidden helicopters that we can't find and they are undoubtedly available to the senior people ... and it is possible to run down a ravine and not be seen," Rumsfeld said. "It is also possible to climb on a donkey or a mule and just walk across the border." Also Friday: Pakistan confirmed that it has deployed its regular army troops, along with provincial militia and paramilitary forces of the Interior Ministry, to seal the Afghan border closest to Kandahar. Reports said more than 1,000 troops were sent to the area. The World Food Program is now getting enough food into Afghanistan to feed the 6-million people there who are hungry, the director of the U.N. agency said. British soldiers took up positions at Bagram air base near Kabul to make it safe for humanitarian and diplomatic missions, and France said it would send combat planes to Afghanistan. An ethnic Pashtun group threatened to attack Northern Alliance fighters, most of whom are ethnic Tajiks and Uzbeks, unless the alliance halted its advance at the central Afghan city of Ghazni. If northern alliance troops don't stop at Ghazni, a Pashtun city that is a dividing point between northern Afghanistan and the predominantly Pashtun south, "There will be a big collision between ethnic Pashtun and the Northern Alliance," said Zulmai Afzali, a spokesman for about two dozen Pashtun leaders exiled in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta. -- Information from the Washington Post, Knight Ridder and the Associated Press was used in this report.
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