M A I N   N E W S

Mazar-e-Sharif ‘falls’ to Alliance 

Moscow, October 16
The opposition Northern Alliance today captured the key strategic northern town of Mazar-e-Sharif with the assistance of 4,000 Taliban fighters who switched sides, Russia’s commercial channel NTV reported.

However, there was no independent confirmation of the report.

The channel reporting from Afghan opposition headquarters in Khoja Bahauddin said Uzbek warlord Abdul Rasheed Dostum’s troops entered Mazar-e-Sharif, known as the northern gateway of Afghanistan, from the south and south-east.

It said the alliance had confirmed that Gen Dostum’s troops had entered Mazar-e-Sharif.

The TV channel said the alliance was ferrying arms and ammunition by helicopters to Gen Dostum, who had managed to rapidly cover 30-40 km in a couple of days without facing much resistance after local Taliban field commanders with 4,000 fighters joined his ranks.

Earlier, quoting Afghan Embassy sources in Tajik capital Dushanbe, the Itar-Tass news agency reported heavy fighting near Mazar-e-Sharif airport between another Northern Alliance field commander and the Taliban units, mostly consisting of Pakistanis and Arab mercenaries.

According to the NTV, the opposition forces are in a hurry to establish control over Mazar-e-Sharif before the launching of US ground attack from the Uzbekistan territory to gain a bargaining position.

The US special forces could be planning to make Mazar-e-Sharif their main base for advancing deep into Afghanistan, just like the Soviets did in 1979, the NTV said.

Meanwhile, the US military on Tuesday again mounted fierce bombing raids on Afghanistan, pounding Taliban troops and military equipment sites near Kabul and Kandahar with some 60 strike jets and bombers, a senior defence official said.

The official, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters that the raids on Monday night and Tuesday were concentrated against the “military marshaling areas,” including sites where troops and equipment are joined for deployment to fight.

“We are talking about areas where you marry up troops with equipment,’’ said the official. But there was no indication that targets included thousand of Taliban troops dug in north of the capital of Kabul against opposition Northern Alliance forces.

Among weapons used against targets in the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar in southern Afghanistan overnight was at least one US air force special forces AC-130 gunship. The slow four-engine turboprop aircraft strike ground targets with withering, accurate fire from 105mm cannon and rapid-fire machine guns.

The official was not specific on what targets were attacked by the “spectre” gunship, one of the most devastating night weapons in the US military arsenal. The crew of the aircraft uses night-vision equipment to attack targets as the aircraft circles slowly in the night.

Tuesday’s raids came on the 10th day of a major air campaign by US and British forces against Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban and guerrilla training bases of Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaida organisation. Washington has accused Bin Laden of masterminding last month’s attacks on the USA.

“The targets were all outside of the cities,” the US Defence official said of the overnight raids against Kabul and Kandahar.

The official said about 50 navy strike jets from aircraft carriers in the region and as many as 10 US heavy bombers based on the British island on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean took part in the raids. Reuters