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More Than 25 Dead In U.S. Strikes, Threatens More
ISLAMABAD, Oct 8 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - More than 25 people were killed in Kabul and elsewhere in the overnight U.S.-led military strikes on Taliban targets in Afghanistan, the Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) agency reported Monday.
The Pakistan-based agency said 10 people had died in the Qasabah Khana neighborhood near Kabul airport, while more than 10 had been killed near the offices of state-run Radio Shariat, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
"There is a possibility that the number of deaths is more," AIP said.
"Twenty were killed, including women, children and the elderly," the regime's ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef, told reporters at a press conference, adding that they died in Kabul.
"Five member of Taliban died in a strike on the Sheen Dand military air base in the western province of Farah which borders Iran," AIP reported.
AIP also quoted the governor of neighboring Herat province, Khairulla Khair Khawah, as saying an oil depot near Herat city airport had been destroyed.
"It was a small depot and so not very significant," Khawah said.
Maulvi Najeebullah, the Taliban consul general in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar, told AFP that casualties had been reported in Kabul and the cities of Kandahar and Jalalabad.
Meanwhile, the U.S. has said it will carry out further air assaults on Afghanistan after launching an initial series of strikes on Sunday night, BBC's online service reported.
U.S. military sources said the bombings, which Washington carried out with the help of British military forces, would carry on for several evenings to come.
Fifteen bombers, 25 strike aircraft and 50 Tomahawk cruise missiles were deployed as the U.S. hit back 26 days after the attacks on New York and Washington.
U.K. Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said "very considerable damage" was inflicted on the targets that were attacked.
The Taliban regime's air defenses and command centers were the main targets as U.S. President George W Bush told the U.S. nation, "The battle is now joined on many fronts...we will not falter and we will not fail."
In addition to the attacks on Kabul, the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar and the eastern city of Jalalabad have each been hit at least twice since the operation began late in the evening local time.
The attacks worked liked "a finely-oiled machine," said a US B-52 bomber pilot, BBC added.
The Afghan Northern Alliance, which opposes the Taliban, said "terrorist" camps at Jalalabad and the Taliban airbase at Kunduz were struck in the raids, as was the airport at Mazar-e-Sharif.
The Taliban said that Osama Bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar were unhurt amid reports of several casualties in Kabul.
Heavy fighting is also said to have broken out between Northern Alliance and Taliban forces north of Kabul.
The Iranian news agency, IRNA, reported that fighting had broken out in the border town of Zaranj between local people and Taliban supporters.
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