Islamabad, November 29
US war planes struck the Taliban’s lone remaining stronghold of Kandahar and deployed more marine troops around it hunting for Al Qaida and militia leaders as Northern Alliance troops closed in on the southern Afghanistan city amidst defiant Taliban supremo Mullah Mohammad Omar’s order to his fighters to “stand and fight”.

The US aircraft pounded locations near the airport in Kandahar after Taliban troops fired rockets at local tribal warriors who sought US air strike cover.
Residents of Kandahar escaping the air raids to Pakistani border areas said the bombs fell around the city.

Northern Alliance Deputy Defence Minister Bismillah Khan said his troops were moving into Kandahar and expected the city to fall within a week or may be earlier than that.
“Fighting is on near the city,” he said quoting, Alliance commanders taking part in the battle there.

In the north of Afghanistan, anti-Taliban forces began clearing bodies of hundreds of Osama bin Laden loyalists killed in an uprising which went on for three days. 
Pakistan-based militant outfit Lashkar-e-Toiba, whose volunteers fought along with the Taliban, warned that the USA must stockpile body bags if its troops tried to launch a ground assault on Kandahar.

US forces have started targeting Taliban and Al Qaida leaders in a bid to cut them off from the troops, Rear Admiral John Stufflebeem, Deputy Director of operations for the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said.

Earlier, US officials said more than six senior leaders of Al Qaida and several hundreds of Bin Laden’s most loyal fighters have been killed in the war so far.

A report in the Los Angeles Times said a leading Al-Qaida figure Ahmad Abdul Rehman, son of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rehman, the blind Muslim cleric serving a life sentence for conspiracy to bomb a number of US landmarks, has been arrested by the Northern Alliance forces.

The 36-year-old Rehman and upto a dozen other Al-Qaida operatives could be held at a US military facility in the Pacific, perhaps in Guam or Wake Island, the paper quoting US intelligence officials reported. Taliban supremo, who apparently escaped a devastating US air attack near Kandahar on Tuesday, told his fighters that there is no question of surrender and no need for negotiations.

“Don’t vacate any areas,” Omar said in a radio broadcast.

“This is not a question of tribes. This is a question of Islam,” Omar was quoted as saying by Taliban sources in his broadcast.

There have been reports of secret talks between Taliban and tribes on the possible pullout by the militia from Kandahar. However, the reports have been publicly denied.

Reports said US forces were concentrating their hunt for Bin Laden on Tora Bora region near Jalalabad, east of Kabul.

Bin Laden, the world’s most wanted fugitive, is believed to be moving by night between caves in the honeycombed mountains, protected by a loyal band of Arab Al-Qaida fighters, BBC reported.

To encourage information on him, radio broadcasts and leaflets dropped from US planes telling Afghans about America’s offer of 25-million-dollar cash reward.

USA confirmed that a CIA officer was killed in the prison uprising near Mazar-e-Sharif.

Victoria Clarke, Pentagon’s chief spokesperson, said pockets of resistance persisted in areas nominally under control of opposition forces, which had not yet regained complete control of a prison fortress near Mazar-e-Sharif following a bloody uprising.

This is an important breakthrough because it had not come through these talks would have bogged down, but now they have focus, said Mohammad Hussin Bakhshi, an aide to Northern Alliance delegate Mohammad Natiqi.