US-led jets dropped three bombs Wednesday morning near the airport in the southern city of Kandahar -- the stronghold of the ruling Taliban, according to news reports reaching Islamabad.
This was the second straight daylight raids in Afghanistan that began Tuesday. The bombs were dropped early morning in the area around Kandahar's airport, one of the positions of Taliban that protects Osama bin Laden, the prime suspect of September 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington of the United States.
The U.S.-led force began strikes Sunday night and pressed ahead with a promise to get Laden "dead or alive". But Afghanistan responded to U.S. airstrikes with defiance and vowed revenge, pledging over two million Afghan lives in a Jihad (holy struggle) against what it called U.S. "open terrorism."
Mullah Zaeef, Taliban chief representative to Pakistan, told the press here Tuesday that a cruise missile had slammed into a house of Mullah Mohammad Omar, supreme leader of Taliban, but he was not there. He also announced that at least 35 civilians were killed or wounded in the airstrikes.
Another missile hit a demining office in Kabul, killing four guards and seriously injuring others. The U.N.-funded demining office -- Afghan Technical Consultants (ATC) is located in eastern Kabul's civilian area.
Confirming the deaths, U.N. spokesman appealed to the U.S.-led force to distinguish "civilians from combatants carrying arms."
( Xinhua News Agency 10/10/2001)
