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U.S. Launches Ground Operations in Afghanistan
WASHINGTON, Oct 20 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The heaviest bombings inside Afghanistan continued early Saturday as the U.S. confirmed it sent elite troops on a mission inside the country, opening a new phase in the war on terror the U.S. government has vowed to win, defense sources said early Saturday.
In Kabul, a Taliban official said U.S. commandos had been dropped by helicopter in Baba Sahib, a mountainous area to the west of Kandahar, late Friday.
Abdul Hanan Hemat said that Taliban troops went into the area and forced U.S. commandos to withdraw.
There was no comment from the United States.
The lightening raid, which involved between 100 and 200 army Rangers and other special forces troops, lasted a few hours and marks the first combat operation by ground troops inside Afghanistan since the beginning of U.S. and British strikes against Taliban and al-Qaeda targets on October 7.
By early Saturday, the assault troops have been ferried by helicopters out of Afghanistan, U.S. military sources said.
Officially, there was no word on what the goal of the operation was or whether it was achieved.
U.S. defense officials refused to say whether the Rangers sustained any casualties, but did acknowledge losing a support helicopter and members of its crew, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
"Two U.S. military personnel were killed today in Pakistan as a result of a helicopter accident while supporting Operation Enduring Freedom," the Pentagon said in a brief statement late Friday. "Names have not been released pending notification of next of kin."
Pakistani military officials said the helicopter, which was on a search and rescue mission, came down in the southwestern province of Baluchistan.
The Pentagon said U.S. forces used more than 90 strike aircraft to hit 18 targeted areas in their latest air raids, and that airfields and defenses, ammunition depots and military training facilities were targeted.
The Taliban claim the bombings have killed up to 500 civilians, a claim the U.S. denies.
The Pentagon last week admitted that one of its precision-guided missiles hit an Afghan village, killing civilians.
"We don't want this fight, but if there is a ground battle we would prefer that to aerial bombing," said Hemat, head of the militia's Bakhter information agency, "Afghans are ready for jihad [struggle] and we will fight."
U.S. President George W. Bush, in Shanghai for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, said the U.S.-led war on terror was "making great progress".
The president assured that the soldiers who perished in the helicopter crash "will not have died in vain".
He said he was pleased with how the U.S.-led war on terror was proceeding, saying it was "making great progress."
"We are dismantling the Taliban defenses, the Taliban military, we are destroying terrorist hideaways," the president stressed. "We are slowly but surely encircling the terrorists so that we can bring them to justice".
Bush has vowed to crush international terrorism and to hunt down bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network, blamed by Washington for the September 11th airborne attacks on U.S. targets.
The use of ground troops has appeared imminent for days as the Taliban ran short of targets that can be hit by warplanes and cruise missiles.
U.S. officials said earlier that a small number of U.S. special forces were inside Afghanistan trying to coordinate air strikes with anti-Taliban forces, but said the covert action should not be seen as the start of a U.S. ground offensive.
One Afghan opposition commander, Mohammad Atta, said an eight-member U.S. military team was in the north of the country with forces under anti-Taliban warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostam.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld declined comment, but admitted that U.S. forces had, "from time to time", helped anti-Taliban forces with air support, ammunition and food, primarily in the north.
Since the beginning of its offensive on Afghanistan, the U.S. has proclaimed that it would support anti-Taliban opposition forces and provide them with aid in order to oust the Taliban and establish a new regime.
U.S. warplanes pounded the Afghan capital, Kabul, and the Taliban regime's stronghold of Kandahar raids that lasted into the early hours of Saturday, stepping up pressure on the beleaguered militia.
Afghanistan has been subjected to U.S. strikes for nearly two weeks.
But despite the pressure, the Taliban regime was defiant Friday, reiterating that it would not hand over bin Laden to the U.S. and saying that both bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar were alive and well despite the strikes.
"Osama is an Islamic issue and a faith issue and we are not going to change our faith for anyone," the Taliban's ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef, said.
The Taliban have repeatedly offered to hand over bin Laden to an impartial international court, and even to the U.S., if concrete evidence linking him to the September 11th = attacks were presented to them.
The U.S. has refused to negotiate or share evidence.
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