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U.S. Airstrikes Continue to Pound Taliban Frontlines
WASHINGTON, Nov. 3 (IslamOnline & news agencies) - Two waves of U.S. warplanes early Saturday continued to pound positions of the Afghanistan's ruling Taliban militia north of the capital, Kabul.
The targets were on or near the village of Estarghech, set at the foot of mountains along the west of the lush Shomali Plain, where Afghanistan's ruling Taliban militia and the opposition United Front movement, also known as the Northern Alliance, face each other from trenches.
Opposition soldiers described seeing around 25 single explosions dropped from what they said were F-18 jets flying high in the clear blue sky. The raids began at around 7 a.m. (0230 GMT). There were no reports of U.S. B-52 bombers taking part in the bombing runs as in previous days.
The U.S. airstrikes followed opposition radio reports suggesting that hundreds of Taliban had moved into Estarghech, a strategic position looking down over the old road running south from Charikar, held by the opposition, to Kabul.
American warplanes have been hitting military targets around the country for nearly a month and the Taliban frontlines north of Kabul for most of the last two weeks.
The opposition Northern Alliance hopes to capitalize on the U.S. offensive by marching south towards the capital. But the movement, with an estimated 15-20,000 fighters, is poorly equipped and spread across over 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) of frontline with the Taliban. A push by the Alliance this week fell short of the Taliban-controlled city of Mazar-i-Sharif.
Senior officials have insisted that the United Front is close to being ready to take on the Taliban, and a small military exercise involving a few hundred troops was staged on Saturday close to the opposition stronghold of Jabal-us-Saraj.
There has been a noticeable increase in the number of opposition mujahideen (fighters), many in new uniforms, visible in Jabal- us-Saraj and neighboring Gulbahar during the last few days. But closer to the front there was little sign of preparations for a new phase in Afghanistan's civil war.
The Pentagon has also denied Taliban claims that its forces on Saturday shot down a U.S. helicopter during the night in an operation to the south of the capital, Kabul. A Taliban Information Ministry official said the helicopter was shot down while trying to rescue the crew of another aircraft that had crashed in the area.
"All together between 40 to 50 Americans have died in both these incidents," the official told news agencies. "You can see the bodies of the Americans on board the helicopters with their uniforms."
The Department of Defense, however, did confirm that another U.S. helicopter on a special forces mission crashed late Friday, injuring four crew members. The Pentagon said all servicemen were rescued by another American helicopter and evacuated from the country.
"The injuries were not life-threatening and they are being treated," Air Force Maj. Michael Halbig, a Pentagon spokesman, told news agencies. He would not say where the helicopter crashed, or where the injured crew members were being treated.
Less than an hour after the helicopter went down, an RQ-1B Predator was reported missing by the Air Force, which said preliminary reports suggested icy weather also caused that crash.
"There is no plan to recover the aircraft and no sensitive technology will be compromised by not recovering the aircraft," the military's Central Command said in a release from its headquarters in Tampa, Florida.
But the Pentagon, worried about sensitive equipment aboard the helicopter falling into Taliban hands, directed U.S. F-14 attack jets from the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt to the site and they bombed the wreckage of the helicopter.
Meanwhile, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld flew on Saturday to Uzbekistan, a key Central Asian ally in the military campaign in Afghanistan, as part of a lightning tour that had already taken in Russia and Tajikistan.
He made no comment on arrival late at night in Tashkent from Tajikistan, which like Uzbekistan, has strategic significance for the United States since it borders Afghanistan.
Russia had earlier renewed a promise of intelligence support for the war.
After meeting Tajik President Imomali Rakhmonov in Dushanbe, Rumsfeld expressed gratitude for the former Soviet republic's cooperation with U.S. "overflights and intelligence and various types of military-to-military cooperation."
He told journalists that experts from both sides would study what additional help could be provided in the war against the Taliban movement that rules Afghanistan.
Tajikistan has offered the use of its airspace and other support for U.S. search-and-rescue and humanitarian operations.
Fellow former Soviet republic Uzbekistan has offered an air base to Washington for similar operations and at least 1,000 U.S. troops are believed to be based there.
Rumsfeld was due to have talks with Uzbek President Islam Karimov before flying on to Pakistan and finally to India, the last stop on the whirlwind tour of five countries.
In Washington, a private think tank specializing in military expenses estimated the month-long military operation in Afghanistan had already cost the United States up to $800 million. The report predicted the bill could soon escalate to one billion dollars a month.
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