Times, UK

Spies lead US bombers to strike

BY ROLAND WATSON AND MARTIN FLETCHER

AMERICAN bombers attacked a Taleban compound near Kandahar after being told that Mullah Muhammad Omar was there last night.

The intelligence was received and the strike ordered while Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, was visiting the military’s Central Command headquarters in Florida. Mr Rumsfeld, who watched a live video feed of the attack, said he had no names of those at the compound, but “it clearly was a leadership area. All of the indicators demonstrated it was a nontrivial leadership activity. Whoever was there is going to wish they weren’t.”

General Tommy Franks, commander of the US military operation, had earlier disclosed where the Pentagon believes Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda and Taleban leaders are hiding: the area around Kandahar where Mullah Omar, the Taleban supreme leader, heads a garrison of about 5,000, and a larger area of mountainous territory between Kabul, Jalalabad and Tora Bora. Mr Rumsfeld also said the military were receiving a lot of intelligence on the whereabouts of bin Laden and his cohorts. “There’s no question that the reward money is an incentive,” he said.

General Franks went on to say that bin Laden’s foreign supporters holed up in Kandahar were seeking a way out and that the presence of a US Marine base near by would add to the pressure on the city.

The general also said that the Pentagon had identified 40 sites in Afghanistan where al-Qaeda terrorists may have been developing chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.

He said that a “great deal” of chemical samples and laboratory paraphernalia had been found flown to the US for analysis: “If there’s anything there we will find it. We will not leave weapons of mass destruction in this country.”

-- Anonymous, November 28, 2001