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More Civilian Deaths Confirmed in Afghanistan; U.S. Increases Pressure On Taliban, Bin Laden
ISLAMABAD, Oct 21 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - U.S. attack helicopters and low-flying jets filled the skies Sunday over Kabul in their first daytime sorties and were unchallenged by Taliban anti-aircraft batteries.
An Agence France-Presse correspondent who visited a ravaged residential area Sunday heard residents say at least 10 civilians died in the raids, nine of them members of the same family killed by stray ordnance as they sat down to breakfast.
MSNBC also quoted a news agencies reporter as saying that he has seen the bodies of women and children in the carnage of two houses that were hit by U.S. missiles.
It was the highest civilian toll independently confirmed by foreign media since the October 7 start of the U.S. air campaign on Afghanistan. A Taliban spokesman said 18 civilians died in Sunday's raids.
The Taliban have reported that at least 400 civilians have been killed since the beginning of the U.S. onslaught two weeks ago.
Besides Kabul, U.S. helicopters also struck the southern city of Kandahar, the Taliban's stronghold. A Taliban officials said U.S. forces "were not able to land - we were ready for confrontation."
A Taliban emergency cabinet meeting Sunday in Kabul ordered extra weapons and ammunition to be distributed to forces across the country after the U.S. commando raids, the Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) agency reported.
For the second day, U.S. warplanes also pounded frontline Taliban positions in northern Samangan province, which straddles the borders with Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, AIP said.
They also struck Herat, in the west, killing "50 to 60 civilians", a senior Taliban official said.
As the U.S. military campaign entered its third week, the lack of response by air defenses was the clearest sign that the way is now clear for more U.S. commando ground operations similar to those conducted for the first time Saturday outside Kandahar.
The second set of raids in as many days on frontlines east of Mazar-i-Sharif appeared aimed at clearing the way for troops of the opposition Northern Alliance to take control of the strategic city. The Northern Alliance has been engaged for the past two weeks in battles with defending Taliban forces.
Two commanders and three soldiers of the Northern Alliance were publicly hanged Saturday in Mazar-i-Sharif after being "arrested on the battlefield," a Taliban official said Sunday.
In Shanghai, leaders of Pacific Rim countries, including presidents George W. Bush of the United States, Vladimir Putin of Russia and Jiang Zemin of China, Sunday pledged to limit economic fallout of the "murderous deeds" of September 11.
Leaders of the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum "unequivocally condemn in the strongest terms the terrorist attacks in the United States on 11 September." It was the first political statement by the12-year-old economic body on the U.S. confrontation with Afghanistan.
U.S. officials said the first major ground action of the military campaign in Afghanistan was a success. But the commandos airdropped in the vicinity of Kandahar failed to find the two prime targets of the campaign, Osama bin Laden, head of the al-Qa'eda network, and his protector, the Taliban's supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.
"The mission overall was successful. We accomplished our objective," Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard Myers said, adding that his troops had hoped, but not expected, to find the pair.
"Osama bin Laden and his companions are living in complete safety," a Taliban minister visiting Pakistan confirmed Sunday. "No harm has come to them."
The special forces raid came under cover of darkness, when more than 100 troops equipped with night vision goggles parachuted near Kandahar, where they struck an airfield and a residence of Mullah Omar and pulled out after a few hours and encountered "light resistance," Myers said. He added that the commandos seized intelligence material from the target locations, which was being analyzed for its value.
Russia's Interfax news agency quoted a defense ministry official in Tajikistan, Afghanistan's northern neighbor, as saying the operation achieved nothing to affect the overall situation.
The unnamed official said the troops landed near Mount Babashakhi, in the western outskirts of Kandahar, but found themselves in an area densely populated by Taliban militia and left again by helicopter, the official said.
They had been airlifted from Pakistani bases at Pans and Jacobobad, he said.
A U.S. helicopter that crashed Saturday in Pakistan was part of the U.S. ground assault. A Taliban official claimed the aircraft was hit by its forces, but U.S. officials denied this, saying the crash was an accident.
Taliban education minister Mullah Amir Khan Muttaqi told the AIP between 20 and 25 U.S. soldiers were killed in the crash,
Washington said two servicemen were killed and three others were injured when the helicopter crashed.
The Washington Post newspaper reported that Bush has given the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) sweeping powers to eliminate bin Laden and al-Qa'eda.
Bush has also confirmed to the CIA that his statement "wanted dead or alive" stands and that bin Laden's assassination is permissible, news agencies reported.
Quoting senior U.S. government officials, the Post said Bush added more than one billion dollars to the CIA's budget, most of it for the new covert action to take place under "unprecedented" coordination between the Agency and the armed forces.
The AFP quoted a Northern Alliance commander as saying that a team of U.S. military specialists is helping the Afghan opposition build an airstrip capable of handling An-32 or Hercules C-130-type cargo planes at Gulbohar, a small town at the mouth of the Panjshir valley north of Kabul.
Completing the strip would enable anti-Taliban forces to open a new supply link with areas north of the Hindu Kush mountains where aid is arriving via Tajikistan, he said.
Meanwhile, Pakistan, which is under increasing pressure to open its frontiers to refugees fleeing war, famine and anarchy in Afghanistan, sealed its Chaman border crossing Sunday.
Pakistan's border with its western neighbor has been officially closed since the start of the air campaign, but thousands of refugees managed to make their way into the country over the past week. U.N. refugee agency spokesman Peter Kessler said about 10,000 people were stuck on the other side of the Chaman crossing.
The cost of the current crisis for Pakistan will be between one billion and 2.5 billion dollars, Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz told reporters in Islamabad.
"I think it all depends how long the various actions will last," he said. "If it ends soon it will be on the lower side of this range, if it continues for longer it will be on the higher side, so it is a substantial cost."
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