Three flashes first sign of onslaught

By ANGELA GREGORY and AGENCIES

The United States began its airborne assault on Afghanistan shortly after nightfall and under clear skies.

At 9 pm Afghan time (5.25 am yesterday NZ time), and shortly before a curfew on the streets of the capital, Kabul, three large flashes suddenly punctured the moonlit sky 40km to the north.

Minutes later several loud explosions were heard, the city's electricity supply was cut and anti-aircraft fire opened up.

By 5.45 am (NZ time) a black plume of smoke was rising over Kabul, but the citizens reportedly reacted more with curiosity than fear, showing few signs of panic. It had been a long-expected attack.

The strike on Taleban military positions and Osama bin Laden's terrorist bases was led by satellite-guided Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from American and British submarines and destroyers in the Arabian Sea.

They were followed by stealth bombers, which flew nonstop from the US, long-range bombers deployed from a British island in the Indian Ocean and US Navy strike aircraft deployed from aircraft carriers in the Arabian Sea.

The military action had come 26 days after 19 terrorists hijacked commercial airliners, smashing them into New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington.

The allied strikes continued throughout the Afghan night, pounding anti-aircraft sites, military headquarters, terrorist camps, airfields and a concentration of Taleban tanks.

With a relatively small number of conventional military targets to hit, the aim was to eliminate the threat from Taleban air defences and allow a sustained campaign against terrorism.

The Taleban forces, dependent on the passion of their fighting men, can only hope to weather what could be a prolonged onslaught, as Afghans did the Soviet invasion of the 1980s.

The southern city of Kandahar, where the Taleban have their headquarters, took some of the worst pounding from 5.55 am New Zealand time yesterday.

By 6.08 am the US attacks had destroyed a command base at the airport and a radar station.

Reports said people began to flee Kandahar after the attacks.

Other targets hit in the Taleban stronghold included the home of their supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar.

But by just 7.34 am the Taleban ambassador to Pakistan was reporting that Omar and bin Laden had both survived the strikes. News sources said bin Laden had not been specifically targeted as intelligence services were not sure where he was.

At least three training camps near the northeastern city of Jalalabad were thought to have been hit about 15 minutes after the Kabul strike.

At 7.21 am explosions and fires broke out around the airport at the northern Taleban-held city of Mazar-i-Sharif. Afghan opposition forces reported "dozens" of US helicopters and jets overhead.

Taking swift advantage of the undermined Taleban defence, the opposition forces were shelling Taleban positions north of Kabul by 7.47 am.

Within hours of the attack defiant Taleban spokesmen said there had been no significant damage to targets and claimed an an unidentified plane had been brought down in Farah province.

The US says none of its planes is missing.