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Taliban Reported Fleeing Last Bastion
WASHINGTON, Nov 16 (News Agencies) - Taliban forces were reportedly fleeing their home base city of Kandahar Friday, signaling the collapse of the militia's hardline rule, as U.S. officials said its forces had killed Osama bin Laden's senior lieutenant.
U.S. intelligence intercepts indicated that bin Laden's deputy and top military commander, Mohammad Atef, was killed in an airstrike near Kabul.
A Pakistani source close to bin Laden said Atef was a key player in al-Qaeda's military and financial structure.
"It will be a huge blow not only to Osama but to his network," said the source, who requested anonymity.
The U.S.-led campaign in Afghanistan was launched on October 7 with the goal of punishing the Taliban for refusing to hand over bin Laden, wanted by the U.S. for the terrorist strikes on the United States on September 11 that left some 5,000 dead. Bin Laden's al-Qaeda network was also meant to be wiped out.
The Taliban fled from the capital Kabul last week and are now on the run from Kandahar, from where the movement emerged to take control of the entire country in 1996, according to reports.
Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar ordered the pullout to avoid further civilian casualties from U.S. airstrikes against the city, the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) said.
The withdrawal, if confirmed, would mark the final collapse of the Taliban's rule in Afghanistan.
Except for a besieged pocket of territory in the far north, the regime - which held 90 percent of the country a week ago - would control no major cities and only a few provinces in the dustbowl south of the country.
Washington was skeptical about the report, with Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Stufflebeem saying: "I don't put much stock in it at this point."
Concerning Atef's fate, however, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said he had received "authoritative" reports that the al-Qaeda lieutenant, who carried a five-million-dollar reward on his head, had been killed.
"I've seen it in writing and I've heard it orally," he said. "The reports I've received seemed authoritative."
Stufflebeem said the reports came from intelligence intercepts of conversations that revealed that Atef apparently was killed in an airstrike on a command-and-control center a couple of days ago. Another U.S. official, who asked not to be identified, said the strike was near Kabul.
"If true, that of course is important to us, to be able to get at al-Qaeda," he said. "Getting at al-Qaeda leadership is a positive thing."
Meanwhile, British and U.S. commandos secured an airbase north of Kabul on Friday, readying it for the arrival of thousands more crack troops and large shipments of humanitarian aid, officials in London and Washington said.
A 60-strong advance party of French troops set off to fly to the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif via Turkey and Uzbekistan, and the German parliament approved a government plan to send up to 3,900 soldiers.
And President Jacques Chirac announced late Friday that France would step up its contribution by sending combat aircraft to Afghanistan.
Canada, Turkey, Jordan and Indonesia, have also earmarked troops for what could become a U.N.-backed humanitarian or peacekeeping mission.
Rumsfeld confirmed that U.S. and other allied forces - believed to be British and possibly French - were also in action on another mission: the hunt for bin Laden and key al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders.
A U.S. defense official on Thursday said that the U.S.-backed opposition Northern Alliance had captured some senior al-Qaeda leaders, but not bin Laden, in what could be a valuable coup on the intelligence front.
The report that the Taliban were fleeing Kandahar came as opposition leaders were negotiating for its surrender as well as the surrender of the besieged town of Kunduz in the north.
Thousands of Taliban, many of them hardline Arab and Pakistani volunteers linked to al-Qaeda, are thought to be holed up in Kunduz, which has been heavily bombarded by U.S. warplanes.
"At the end of two days, we will attack. We want to enter Kunduz before winter," said the commander of Northern Alliance forces attacking Kunduz, General Mohammad Daud.
Kandahar is surrounded by a loose coalition of Northern Alliance troops and local tribal leaders and was hit by fierce new U.S. airstrikes on Friday that killed 11 and injured more than 25, according to AIP.
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