WASHINGTON/ISLAMABAD, 24 October — Joint US-Northern Alliance attacks ran into determined resistance from Taleban fighters on the front line north of Kabul yesterday. After three days of US strikes directly aimed at Taleban soldiers, only one thing is clear to the outside world: they can still give a bloody demonstration that their firepower is very much to be reckoned with.
There were what have now become routine complains from the Northern Alliance that the US strikes were too weak to tip the balance of power their way.
"This is nowhere near enough," one field commander said. "In the last week, the Americans dropped around 12 bombs on the Taleban. They need to do at least this every day. What they are doing is not effective."
Taleban soldiers also repulsed a US-assisted opposition offensive in heavy fighting around the key northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif, after US jets struck in support of Afghan opposition troops who were accompanied by teams of special US forces. They, too, failed to make any ground.
Muhammad Atta, an opposition commander, claimed that at first his men, along with US experts, attacked Keshendeh, 70 kilometers south of Mazar-e-Sharif, and killed 10 to 20 Taleban fighters.
"At first we made advances, but later the Taleban launched a counterattack and they were able to regain the lost ground," he admitted.
And as US jets circling high over the Shomali plain that sweeps north of Kabul bombed the front line, Taleban and opposition troops exchanged heavy artillery and rocket fire there as well.
Two Taleban rockets slammed into a crowded bazaar in opposition-held Charikar, killing two civilians and wounding 17. Opposition forces responded with a barrage of artillery fire.
Criticism of the US bombing campaign spread around the Islamic world and triggered fierce anti-American protests near an air base used by US forces in Jacobabad. Pakistani police responded by erecting roadblocks and baton charged demonstrators trying to approach the air base, arresting at least 60 protesters.
Tensions also ran high at the Chaman border crossing between the two countries, where a group of 250 Afghan refugees managed to force their way into Pakistan on the coattails of 200 people allowed in for medical treatment. At least 10,000 Afghan refugees are trapped in a no man’s land along the border, despite a UN appeal for them to be allowed in. On Monday, 1,000 rioters braved warning shots from both sides to break down barbed wire barriers to flee their war- and drought-ravaged country.
UN spokeswoman Stephanie Bunker told reporters in Islamabad that US bombs hit a military hospital in the western city of Herat, as well as residential districts of Kabul.
"Our information ... was that a hospital in Herat was hit and it was reportedly destroyed," she said. "It was a military hospital in a military compound on the outskirts of the city. Reports are indicating that several bombs have hit residential areas in Khair Khana close to health and feeding centers in Kabul. In addition, a residential area called Macroyan has been hit. Residential areas and some villages around Kabul are becoming more dangerous because Taleban troops are moving into those areas," she added.
A US defense official acknowledged a weapon may have gone astray and hit a building other than its intended target in Herat, but gave no indication whether a hospital was hit. The UN World Food Program said the raid also damaged its warehouse in Herat.
The Taleban claim more than 1,000 civilians died in the US bombing campaign, a figure rejected by the Pentagon. It also said that at least 15 more were killed in Herat yesterday, including some who died while praying in a mosque during bombing.
Protests against the strikes spread through key Arab countries Washington has been courting for its anti-terror coalition. Kuwaiti lawmakers, Jordanian and Egyptian student demonstrators and Qatar’s foreign minister added their voices yesterday to a growing chorus against the military action.
"The attacks against Afghanistan are unacceptable and we have condemned them," Qatar’s Foreign Minister Sheikh Hamad ibn Jassem ibn Jabr Al-Thani said on a visit to Tehran.
Afghan warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum said yesterday his forces were locked in fierce fighting with Taleban militia for the key northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif. Taleban Education Minister and senior spokesman Mulla Amir Khan Muttaqi said the opposition had tried to push forward but had been repulsed, the private Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) reported.
"Our forces launched an attack yesterday and the fighting has been fierce," Dostum said by satellite telephone from near the front line.
He added that his troops had mounted an offensive, coinciding with U.S. air strikes on the area, against the Taleban on Monday at 3.00 p.m. in Keshendeh district, some 40 km south of the strategic city which is near the Uzbekistan border. "The fighting is still going on," Dostum said in a brief interview.
The US-led strikes drew yet more praise from Britain, whose forces fired cruise missiles in the first attacks on Oct. 7 and have since provided support with spy planes, tanker aircraft and, reportedly, commandos scouting on the ground.
Defense Minister Geoff Hoon said the raids had now destroyed all nine "terrorist training camps" of Osama Bin Laden, the prime suspect for the Sept. 11 terror attacks that killed around 5,000 in the United Sates. A decision on sending British ground troops would be taken "shortly," he said.
The US Congress returned to work yesterday after being shut down by a bio-terror attack that has left three Americans dead and others sick in an anthrax campaign conducted by mail.
The two latest deaths — of postal workers who handled congressional mail — were confirmed to be a result of anthrax poisoning, Washington Mayor Anthony Williams said.
A White House spokesman said officials were operating under the suspicion that the anthrax-in-the-mail attacks were linked — he did not say how — to the mass killings of American civilians on Sept. 11.
"That’s been the operating suspicion of the White House for a considerable period of time," said spokesman Ari Fleischer.
House of Representatives Democratic leader Richard Gephardt also said after meeting President George W. Bush that "we all suspect" that the September attacks and the cases of anthrax, a potential germ warfare weapon, were linked.
Their comments suggested US leaders were leaning more to a belief that the anthrax outbreak was part of a coordinated strategy to kill Americans on their own soil, starting with the attacks with hijacked airliners that leveled the World Trade Center in New York and damaged the Pentagon.
The US Senate got back to work yesterday and the House of Representatives was to follow suit shortly afterward after a weeklong furlough triggered when anthrax spores were found in a letter addressed to a key lawmaker.
News of the latest anthrax victims added an edge to rampant worldwide fears of bioterrorism.
Suspect envelopes have been found around the world but only two anthrax attacks outside the United States have been confirmed so far, in Kenya and Argentina.
