Islamabad, November 28
US marines consolidated their position around the only remaining Taliban stronghold of Kandahar as American jets scored hits against a militia “leadership compound” in southern Afghanistan but the Taliban today claimed that their supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar was safe.
Acting on specific information that the compound in Kandahar’s Dand area was being used by Taliban leadership, senior Al-Qaida cadre and the Saudi humanitarian group Wafa, US F-16 jets and B-1b bombers overnight attacked two targets with laser-guided weapons.
The strikes came as the USA said it had identified more than 40 sites in Afghanistan that could link Al-Qaida leader Oasma bin Laden with weapons of mass destruction.
Talking about the strikes, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said: “Whoever was there is gonna wish they weren’t.”
Rumsfeld, who watched the attack live from the headquarters of the US Central Command in Florida, said he had no names of the leaders at the targeted facility but stated that they were of “appreciable” importance.
Former Taliban Ambassador to Pakistan Abdul Salam Zaeef said “Omar is safe and sound. He has not been hurt nor any other Taliban leader.”
The USA said it had narrowed down its hunt for Bin Laden in two Afghan towns of Jalalabad and Kandahar but Zaeef said Taliban did not know the whereabouts of the world’s most wanted fugitive.
In another development, officials from the International Committee for the Red Cross were allowed inside the Qala-e-Jhange fort near Mazar-e-Sharif after an uprising by surrendered Taliban foreign fighters, including Pakistanis and Arabs, was crushed by Northern Alliance with the support of US and British special forces.
Scores of disfigured and dismembered corpses were strewn around the fort, a BBC correspondent reported.
PTI
