US planes bombard mountains in Afghanistan

By PHIL REEVES

American war planes have bombarded mountains in Afghanistan for 14 hours in an effort to destroy resurgent guerrilla forces who are disrupting efforts to stabilise the fractured and war-ravaged country.

The US military said 16 tonnes of bombs and rockets were fired in an aerial strike launched after a dozen American special forces were fired at by what they said were suspected Taleban fighters.

Islamic anti-government militias had been threatening to increase attacks after the US-British invasion of Iraq, and the latest battle adds weight to evidence that they are doing so.

The assault involved a ferocious array of attack aircraft - A-10 Thunderbolts, Apache helicopters, Harriers, AC-130 gunships and B-1 bombers - over the Tor Ghar mountains in southwest Afghanistan, not far from the Pakistan border.

Their sights were trained on at least 40 fighters, dug into the mountainside. Reports yesterday said that they were driven out, and that Afghan clean-up forces found a staging camp for hit and run attacks.

The operation, which continued yesterday, came after a fortnight punctuated by evidence that the task confronting the US-led forces and international aid agencies in Afghanistan is growing more formidable.

Two US soldiers were killed in an ambush six days ago. A day earlier - in a move calculated to drive aid organisations out of Afghanistan - a 39-year-old expatriate worker with the International Committee of the Red Cross was shot dead.

Barely a day passes without the announcement of a guerrilla rocket attack, although they are almost always ineffective. Reports from the region suggest that the forces ranged against the Washington-backed interim government of Hamid Karzai, and the US military, have reorganised.

The Americans believe that an alliance may have been forged between the Taleban and the ex-prime minister, warlord and Islamic fundamentalist, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

Afghan security officials say that the anti-government militias - who so far have only surfaced in small groups - have found refuge over the border in Pakistan. This view is shared by the American military.

It was spelled out yesterday by Ali Ahmad Jalali, the Interior Minister in President Karzai"s fledgling government. He told a press conference in Kabul that former Taleban fighters and their al Qaeda associates are staging operations from across the Pakistan border. They have been more active recently, a development which he said could be linked to the Iraq war.

The instability and threat of violence is such that the United Nations yesterday said that it was extending a travel ban in southern Afghanistan for a few more days. It said this was to give the authorities time to improve security in the area where the Red Cross worker was murdered.

- INDEPENDENT