Fox

Fierce Resistance Around Kandahar, Fighting Rages at City's Airport

Tuesday, December 04, 2001

KABUL, Afghanistan — Taliban fighters and members of Usama bin Laden's Al Qaeda militia were putting up fierce resistance against opposition Afghan forces outside Kandahar on Tuesday as a relentless U.S. bombing campaign continued, tribal leaders said.

Some Kandahar defenders fired missiles at U.S. warplanes, but made no hits, U.S. officials said.

The city, the last bastion of the Taliban, remained in the hands of the Islamic group, but a seesawing battle was raging for its airport, a few miles away.

Abdul Jabbar, an Afghan tribal representative in Pakistan in contact with commanders at the scene, described the fighting as close combat. "They're face-to-face," he said.

In Germany, four Afghan factions reached a breakthrough early Tuesday and agreed on a framework for a post-Taliban administration. The United States pressured the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance into dropping demands that threatened to derail talks on Afghanistan's political future.

After days of clashes, Pashtun tribal fighters loyal to former Kandahar governor Gul Agha battled their way into Kandahar airport from the south on Tuesday despite fighting by pro-bin Laden Arab fighters, said one tribal commander Mohammed Jalal Khan.

He said tribal warriors had captured half of the airport and were fighting for control of the terminal building.

The group first reached the airport on Monday but was repelled by a counterattack, according to Agha's brother, Bismillah. Details of casualties were not available.

Other troops loyal to former deputy foreign minister Hamid Karzai were advancing on Kandahar from the north. Some of Karzai's forces have said they have met no resistance from the Taliban.

However, the Pakistan-based news service, Afghan Islamic Press, reported heavy fighting between Taliban and Pashtun tribes in the Shahwali Kot district, about 18 miles north of Kandahar overnight.

The Taliban claimed that they had repelled an assault by Karzai's troops and had killed or wounded dozens of them. The Taliban also seized six vehicles and arrested two opposition fighters. Bodies of anti-Taliban fighters are scattered on the battleground, it said.

Reports from either side could not be verified as the Taliban have barred western journalists from the region. Karzai is being touted as a possible interim national leader in a proposed broad-based temporary administration for Afghanistan.

Refugees who have made it east to the safety of neighboring Pakistan or north to the Afghan capital, Kabul, have also reported fighting in several areas near Kandahar.

Elsewhere, U.S. special forces are in Afghanistan's mountainous east working with local people in the hunt for bin Laden and his top lieutenants.

The Pentagon believes they might be in the Tora Bora area in the White Mountains south of Jalalabad, hiding in vast fortified cave and tunnel networks used by Afghan guerrillas in the war against Soviet occupation in the 1980s.

Backed by a resolution from the Eastern Shura, or council, which controls the Jalalabad area, provincial security chief Hazrat Ali said he had 1,500 men ready for battle against Al Qaeda fighters in the White Mountains.

In Washington, Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem, the deputy director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said U.S. personnel were identifying targets for bombing rather than conducting cave-to-cave searches for bin Laden.

Airstrikes have been heavy in the remote and rugged region. However, Stufflebeem denied reports that U.S. bombs had mistakenly pummeled villages and wrongly killed civilians and anti-Taliban fighters near Tora Bora.

"I don't have any reports of any villages being struck," Stufflebeem said. "The only reports I have are that all our weapons have been on target. I find that a little bit suspect, that villages are being flattened."

Journalists who visited the village of Kama Ado saw nine bomb craters. The debris of thatch houses were spread over two hillsides along with children's shoes, dead cows and sheep and the tail fin of a U.S. Mk83 bomb.

Though the United States said it was targeting bin Laden's followers around this village, anti-Taliban officials said only innocent civilians were hurt. Local officials blamed faulty U.S. intelligence for scores of deaths in three bombed villages.

The other main focus of U.S. bombing in Afghanistan is Kandahar and surrounding countryside, where bin Laden might also be sheltering.

Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar and other senior Taliban leaders, who are believed to be holding out in Kandahar itself, have ordered their troops to defend it to the death and not retreat as they did when other cities were besieged by anti-Taliban forces.

Refugees who have left the city say that Arab members of Al Qaeda are leading Kandahar's defense.

Stufflebeem said U.S. pilots had reported seeing portable surface-to-air weapons fired at them from around the city, which has come under intense bombing. He said these might have been Stinger anti-aircraft missiles or Russian versions of them.

A contingent of more than 1,000 U.S. Marines has set up a base about 70 miles southwest of Kandahar and has been conducting armed reconnaissance patrols, but has stayed out of the fighting. Officials said one of their missions would be to cut supply lines leading to and from Kandahar and shut off escape routes for Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters.

Stufflebeem said there are at least four "pockets of resistance" in northern Afghanistan — two east of Mazar-e-Sharif and two west of that city. In Balkh province, about 2,000 Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters are holed up and trying to work out a surrender arrangement, a senior defense official said.

Meanwhile, three men, who claim to be American citizens and who fought on the side of the Taliban, are now being held by U.S. forces or allied opposition forces in northern Afghanistan, senior defense officials said.

A man identified as John Walker is receiving medical care from U.S. forces after being discovered among captured Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters who had been holed up in a fortress in Mazar-e-Sharif after a prison uprising last week. Two other people who claim to be Americans are being held by the Northern Alliance, a defense official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Asked about Walker, Stufflebeem, said he could not say whether the man would be considered a prisoner of war or would be returned to the United States.

Talks on Afghanistan's future moved ahead in Koenigswinter, Germany, when White House official, Zalmay Khalilzad, telephoned Northern Alliance leader Burhanuddin Rabbani in Kabul, and won a promise to release a long-delayed list of candidates for a proposed interim administration, U.S. envoy James F. Dobbins said.

With the list in hand, representatives of the Northern Alliance, exiles loyal to former King Mohammad Zaher Shah and two smaller groups quickly finalized an agreement for a 29-member interim governing council, U.N. spokesman Ahmad Fawzi said.

-- Anonymous, December 04, 2001