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U.S. Targets Omar's Hideout As International Force Arrives
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| Tora
Bora: Are Mullah Omar and Bin Laden still there?
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KABUL, Jan. 1 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Afghanistan welcomed the new year on an optimistic note Tuesday, preparing for the arrival of an international security force, while Washington broadened the scope of both its so-called war on terrorism and stepped up the hunt for Osama bin Laden and Mullah Mohammad Omar.
Some 149 soldiers from 18 countries left Britain to fly to Kabul to prepare the ground for the UN-mandated force, the German defense ministry said, while in Afghanistan U.S. Marines were reported to have launched a major raid, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).
According to a CNN International report Tuesday from Kandahar airport in southern Afghanistan, "a couple of hundred" Marines were carrying out an operation against a compound in Helmand province to "find intelligence relating to al-Qaeda and the Taliban."
On the broader anti-terror front, Washington announced Tuesday it was freezing the assets of six European groups, five militant outfits from both sides of Northern Ireland's sectarian divide and one Spanish extreme-left group, AFP reported.
U.S. President, George W. Bush, predicted that Bin Laden would be caught "pretty soon", but a U.S. military spokesman denied reports that U.S. Marines were closing in on the former leader of the ousted Taliban regime, Mullah Mohammad Omar.
However, BBC’s online news service cited Afghanistan's interim Prime Minister, Hamid Karzai, Tuesday that U.S. Special Forces have launched an operation to find the fugitive leader of the Taliban.
The operation comes after the Pentagon said it had a "fairly consistent body of intelligence" suggesting where Mullah Mohammad Omar might be hiding, BBC said.
U.S. media reported Tuesday that a force of U.S. Marines based in Kandahar had set off in helicopters to Omar's supposed new base in Baghram but a spokesman for U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Florida denied this.
Instead, according to CNN, the Marines and allied Afghan forces were headed to a large compound in Helmand where they hoped to seize information on Omar and his remaining supporters.
CNN said the Marines had not been involved in any combat and were working alongside anti-Taliban forces loyal to Kandahar strongman Gul Agha.
Bush, speaking near his ranch in Crawford, Texas, did not respond directly to the latest reports of U.S. military action, but said: "Bin Laden is on the run, and any time you get a person running, it means you're going to get him pretty soon... It's just a matter of time."
The United States has been hunting for Mullah Omar since he fled the former Taliban stronghold of Kandahar shortly before it fell to anti-Taliban forces on December 7.
Meanwhile, scores of Bin Laden's al-Qaeda followers were to be transferred from Pakistani custody to a U.S. base in Afghanistan to face interrogation, Pakistan daily newspaper, Dawn, reported Tuesday.
America's military campaign against the remnants of the Taliban and al-Qaeda ran into controversy Monday after villagers confirmed that at least 100 innocent civilians were killed in an U.S. air raid on a suspected arms dump.
In another development, Afghanistan's new government Tuesday defended the U.S. bombing campaign which helped bring it to power, saying American planes had "no other choice" but to attack an eastern village despite innocent deaths.
Afghan Border Affairs Minister, Amanullah Zadran, said bombing was the only way to destroy a large weapons cache in a farmhouse guarded by Taliban and al-Qaeda sympathizers, AFP reported.
"I'm not supporting the bombing (of innocent people) but there was no other choice," Zadran told AFP. "By land it would have been risky. It was a very insecure situation. There is still some opposition in the area."
He added: "There was no intention to kill innocent people. In Afghanistan we have a proverb, when dry wood burns you can also burn wet wood."
Afghan Islamic Press (AIP), however, quoted a witness as saying there were no al-Qaeda or Taliban members there.
The Pentagon threw the blame on Al-Qaeda for any civilian deaths, claiming that the group members were hiding among the local population.
A U.S. military spokesman acknowledged that some civilians could have died in the raid, but insisted that the night-long bombardment had been necessary.
"It is well known to us that there were al-Qaeda/Taliban leadership (in the village). That is why we attacked the compound," said Major Bill Harrison. "We feel it was a legitimate military target."
Since the collapse of Taliban control, both Bin Laden, who has been blamed for the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington D.C., and Mullah Omar have fled their former Afghan strongholds.
Bin Laden is widely rumored to have left the country, but recent reports suggest that Omar and several of his armed followers are holed up in high-ground northwest of his former Kandahar headquarters in the Helmand province.
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