Jets pound a path to Kabul for opposition

By GEOFF CUMMING and AGENCIES

American warplanes carried out their heaviest raids yet on the Taleban frontline north of Kabul yesterday and claimed important gains in pinpointing the whereabouts of Taleban and al Qaeda forces protecting Osama bin Laden.

Jets pounded Taleban positions with bombs and missiles for a fourth day, apparently easing the way for Afghan opposition forces to advance on the capital.

Taleban fighters replied with several surface-to-air missiles, which missed the planes, and bombarded Northern Alliance positions with artillery and mortar fire.

Late yesterday US bombers struck at an oil storage depot near Kandahar in an hour-long assault.

Navy planes earlier attacked Taleban posts around the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, where Northern Alliance rebels claimed advances after fierce fighting.

The rebels said 35 Taleban troops were killed and 140 captured in the battle for the town of Kashendeh, south of Mazar.

But slow progress in talks to head off a post-Taleban power vacuum, concerns about a humanitarian crisis and unease among Muslim allies continue to dog the US-British military campaign.

Confirmation of America's reliance on the Afghan opposition to weaken the Taleban came from Rear Admiral Mark Fitzgerald, commander of the USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier battle group in the Arabian Sea.

"The intent of the bombing campaign is not to win the war alone, but to set the conditions where some other factions that are either friendly or non-Taleban can take charge in that country and throw out the Taleban regime," he said.

"There has to be something happening on the ground."

The sluggish pace of efforts to form an alternative government is concerning the Bush Administration.

Admiral Fitzgerald said pilots had to be careful not to bomb Afghan troops who had defected from the Taleban, and he relied on daily intelligence reports to determine what forces to exclude from search-and-destroy missions.

Pilots were also getting better at identifying Taleban and al Qaeda hiding places.

Border guards in Pakistan reported hearing five powerful explosions in Afghanistan's Paktia province where bin Laden is thought to run a tunnel complex.

Pakistani officials said they believed 2250kg bombs were being used to collapse mountainsides and close tunnel entrances.

But as missiles rained on four Taleban strongholds facing opposition-held Bagram airport, north of Kabul, the defiant regime said its forces remained intact.

In Kandahar, soldiers patrolled residential streets, ordering people to report to armouries and be issued with weapons.

Taleban official Mullah Abdul Razzak said anyone caught spying or working for the US would be executed.

Education Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi said American troops would suffer huge casualties if they invaded Afghanistan.

"Their casualties will be higher than the Russians because Americans are people of [more] pleasure and comfort than the Russian people," he said in Kabul. Moscow lost about 17,000 troops in its Afghan war.

"It is true that their technology is more advanced than ours but as long as one Muslim Afghan is alive he will not surrender to America."

In Washington, Rear Admiral John Stufflebeem said the Pentagon had information that the Taleban might poison humanitarian food for Afghan refugees and blame it on the US. He said refugees should be suspicious of any food coming from stocks controlled by the Taleban.

As hundreds of thousands of Afghans flee the bombing, Pakistan allowed the United Nations to open a camp for 1000 people near the southern border crossing of Chaman.

Pakistan, which wants the refugees housed in camps inside Afghanistan, said it would let in old men, women and children.

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