Thursday November 1 8:52 AM ET

Taliban Say They Have Americans

By Sayed Salahuddin and Zeeshan Haider

KABUL/ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Afghanistan's Taliban rulers said on Thursday they had arrested several U.S. citizens but the announcement shed no light on who they were or what they were doing.

``We have a few American citizens with us. They have been arrested,'' Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef said.

``Their identities are not known so far. The investigation is going on,'' he told a news conference in Islamabad.

In Kabul, the hardline Muslim militia said they repulsed the first joint air and ground attack by U.S. and opposition forces in the north but lost a hydropower plant to U.S. bombing in the south.

The air raids blacked out Afghanistan's second city, Kandahar, which is the powerbase of Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.

The envoy, the isolated Taliban's sole foreign ambassador, said he had no information on how or when the U.S. citizens were detained.

The United States has been bombing Afghanistan since October 7 in retaliation for attacks on New York and Washington blamed on Saudi-born Osama bin Laden, who is believed to be sheltering in the Muslim fundamentalist-ruled country.

Some media reported that Americans had been captured when Afghan mujahideen commander Abdul Haq, who crossed secretly into Afghanistan to raise rebellion, was seized by Taliban forces and summarily executed last week.

There was no independent confirmation of those reports. Haq, a Pashtun warlord and veteran anti-Soviet guerrilla, called on his satellite phone for U.S. air support when he was cornered.

The Taliban said on Saturday they were searching for a man believed to be an American, who had been traveling with Haq.

``He was spotted with Abdul Haq and as far as we know his name is Jamber Jihi,'' Information Ministry spokesman Abdul Hanan Himat told Reuters last week.

OPPOSITION OFFENSIVE

In Kabul, a Taliban Information Ministry official said the Northern Alliance opposition launched three attacks with U.S. air cover overnight but were repulsed.

Senior opposition leaders could not be reached for comment. One Alliance source said an attack had taken place but a spokesman sought to play down its importance.

``I reject the launch of our infantry attack. We will stage it within two or three days,'' Mohammad Ashraf Nadeem told Reuters by telephone from the front. ``Last night it was only an exchange of artillery and heavy fire.''

But the Taliban were proclaiming a victory.

``Last night the opposition staged three massive offensives on Bazari Baluch around Dara-i-Suf in coordination with U.S. bombing,'' Taliban Information Ministry official Qari Fazil Rabi told Reuters.

``They achieved nothing and there is no change in our positions,'' he said.

FIRST JOINT ATTACK

Rabi said the joint attack was the first since the start of the U.S. military campaign 26 days ago.

The opposition is led in Dara-i-Suf in Samangan province by ethnic Uzbek warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostum who wants to recapture the strategic northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif that was his stronghold until a Taliban victory in 1997.

Rabi said the Northern Alliance left casualties on the battlefield, but was unable to give details.

Such battlefield reports from remote areas of war-ravaged Afghanistan cannot be easily verified.

There were no reports of overnight bombing in Kabul or along the Taliban front lines north of the capital that were carpet-bombed for the first time on Wednesday by a giant B-52 bomber.

The eight-engine aircraft sent up a wall of orange flame and clouds of dust along Taliban positions overlooking opposition-held Bagram airbase north of the capital Kabul.

The United States has been bombing the Dara-i-Suf area for two weeks but Taliban defenses remained intact, the Pakistani-based Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) reported.

The battle around Dara-i-Suf lasted three hours, AIP said.

``The opposition forces were not able to advance even an inch and there has been no change in the front lines,'' it quoted an Taliban spokesman as saying.

Dara-i-Suf lies on a vital Taliban supply line linking the south of the country with the north. It is to the south of Mazar-i-Sharif. The city is also astride supply routes, has a large airfield and is close to the border with the former Soviet republic of Uzbekistan.

A small group of about 20 U.S. troops are based in the rugged Dara-i-Suf area, opposition officials have said. U.S. officials have said the forces are in Afghanistan to help coordinate attacks with the Northern Alliance.

CUTTING THE POWER

Rabi said the latest U.S. raids had destroyed a hydropower plant at Kajaki dam in southwestern Helmand province.

All power installations at the 33-megawatt Kajaki plant had been destroyed, he said, although the Kajaki dam itself had not been damaged, he said.

The Kajaki power plant had been undergoing an upgrade with assistance from the Chinese Dongfeng Agricultural Machinery Company that was to add 16.5 megawatts to its generating capacity.

Transmission lines from the plant to Kandahar had been repaired just earlier this year, restoring electricity supplies to the city.

-- Anonymous, November 01, 2001