WASHINGTON/KABUL, 22 October — US forces used helicopters and low-flying warplanes for the first time in attacks on Kabul yesterday as the Taleban Cabinet ordered extra troops, weapons and ammunition to be deployed across the country to fight US commandos.
The “emergency” meeting ordered the distribution of “rocket launchers, heavy machine guns, and anti-aircraft machine guns” to take on US commandos, Education Minister Mulla Amir Khan Muttaqi said, adding that special units would also be deployed with the weapons.
Senior ministers held the meeting, chaired by the Taleban’s second in command, Mulla Hassan, in the wake of the first US ground assault in the country on Friday when US special forces staged a night-time raid on the Taleban’s main stronghold of Kandahar.
Muttaqi said extra ammunition will also be sent to villages and districts under Taleban control. The meeting appealed for financial aid from Muslim countries to help the injured and the families of those killed in US attacks.
Muttaqi breathed defiance, claiming advances against other opposition positions and saying he believed Taleban resistance to the Friday night US ground raid near the southern Taleban power base, Kandahar, had killed between 20 and 25 US commandos.
The Taleban say they had found debris of the US helicopter they claimed to have downed two nights ago that crashed in Pakistan, as well as traces of blood, Al-Jazeera reported yesterday.
With helicopters deployed in air assaults for the first time, raids on Kabul left at least 18 civilians dead, according to the Taleban. One stray US bomb landed on a Kabul residential neighborhood, killing at least 10 people in the worst case of civilian casualties to be independently confirmed since airstrikes began on Oct. 7. Other casualties were in the villages of Suliman, Nawabad and Bagh-e-Desht.
Residents told AFP nine of those who died in the Khair Khana district — four women, three children and two men — were from the same family.
Muttaqi urged aid groups to keep working in Afghanistan and insisted the Taleban was not involved in looting and attacks on staff reported by the United Nations.
“The Taleban have never done such a thing. Some people are taking advantage of the situation. We are committed to giving NGOs security so they can do their work,” he said.
Meanwhile, an Afghan doctor disclosed that Mulla Omar’s son had been killed in one of the military operations. The BBC quoted Dr. Abdul Bari as saying that the child, aged 10, died of injuries after the first American attack on Kandahar.
Herat also suffered another heavy night of bombing and US warplanes were reported to have hit Taleban front-line positions near Kabul and in the northern province of Samangan for a second day.
There were also troubles at the border as conditions worsened in the stricken country. Taleban and Pakistan guards fired into the air to stop about 600 Afghans forcing their way across the sealed frontier into Pakistan.
In the Afghan city of Herat, US planes bombed and destroyed an empty 200-bed army hospital, a Taleban governor told the Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) yesterday. He said the army’s 17th division’s hospital had been evacuated just before it was destroyed in the latest bombing. Taleban officials said US forces mounted helicopter raids on Kabul and Kandahar on Saturday night but US troops were prevented from landing.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell hinted that the military operations could continue during Ramadan, which begins in mid-November, saying it would be in the interest of the US and its allies to see the situation “resolved” before winter.
Asked about an easing or a halt of hostilities during the holy fasting month, Powell said: “We have to be respectful of that very, very significant religious period but at the same time we also have to make sure we pursue our campaign.” Powell said the United States would welcome a push from the Afghan opposition to wrest control of the capital before the onset of winter.
But he stopped short of urging the Northern Alliance fighters to actually enter Kabul to oust the ruling Taleban. Powell said Riyadh and Cairo were cooperating fully with the US-led war on terror. “They are with us. I mean, both Egypt and Saudi Arabia have responded to every request we have made of them,” Powell told Fox News yesterday.
Abdul Hanan Hemat, chief of the Taleban’s Bakhter Information Agency, said that US helicopters carried out operations over the Afghan capital and near the airport at the Taleban’s southern stronghold of Kandahar. “They were not able to land. We were ready for confrontation,” he told AFP. “We are ready any moment to confront them. Our very well-equipped units and forces have been deployed in all surroundings of Kabul.”
In Jabal Saraj, a spokesman for a leading Afghan opposition commander said yesterday that about 500 fighters, including 10 commanders, from the ruling Taleban militia had given themselves up near the northern town of Mazar-e-Sharif. There was no independent confirmation of the defections, and it was not clear whether the 500 would now swap sides and fight for the opposition, as is often the case in Afghanistan.
In Washington, top US general Richard Myers said US forces will try to capture Osama Bin Laden alive, but “bullets will fly” if they encounter him in a “defensive situation.”
“We’ve been at this military business now for just over two weeks. The military is only a small piece of the overall effort,” he said.
“The goal right now is to try to bring down Al-Qaeda and to try to bring down the Taleban, who support them.”
Gen. Myers said that Afghanistan was only a “small piece” of what he suggested might be the broadest campaign since World War Two, possibly lasting more than a lifetime.
A US official said yesterday President Bush has given the CIA “new leeway” to do whatever is necessary in covert operations to destroy Bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda network.
In a presidential order called a “finding,” Bush spelled out what activities the CIA can and cannot undertake in covert operations targeting Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda.
Haji Abdul Qadir, a former governor of the eastern province of Nangahar told AFP the United States will need more than airstrikes and commandos to find Osama Bin Laden.
“He never sleeps. He moves around all the time. Even if we recapture eastern Afghanistan, he can move into the forests and the mountains. He does not have a small organization. Where he is now — only God knows.”
Bin Laden’s ability to hide is now legendary, but Qadir is one of the few Afghan opposition figures who has had close contacts with the world’s most wanted man.
Qadir fought alongside Bin Laden and his Arab army in the later stages of the war against the 1980-89 Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
