Associated Press

Northern alliance fighters rest in Dasht-i-Qala, Takhar province, Afghnaistan yesterday. U.S. jets pounded Taliban positions Monday near front lines outside the Afghan capital and a key northern city in hopes the Afghan opposition can advance on major cities.

Tuesday October 23, 2001

BAGRAM, Afghanistan - U.S. jets struck Taliban front-line positions Sunday and yesterday as the United States tried to pave the way for the opposition to advance on Kabul and other major cities. In an appeal for Muslim support worldwide, the Taliban accused America of waging a campaign of "genocide."

The president of neighboring Pakistan, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, said he hoped military operations in Afghanistan would be over by mid-November, when the Muslim holy month of Ramadan begins. Leaders throughout the Muslim world fear a backlash if operations continue against Muslim Afghanistan during Ramadan.

While saying the U.S.-led campaign should continue until its objectives are met, Musharraf said bombing during Ramadan "would certainly have some negative effects in the Muslim world." During Ramadan, Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset.

"So one would hope and wish that this campaign comes to an end before the month of Ramadan, and one would hope for restraint during the month of Ramadan," he said on CNN's "Larry King Live."

The Taliban's ambassador to Pakistan, AbdulSalam Zaeef, claimed U.S. and British jets attacked a hospital in the western Afghan city of Herat Sunday, killing more than 100 people.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld denied the claim, and Britain said

none of its planes took part in any raid against Herat. Rumsfeld also denied Taliban claims that they had shot down two U.S. helicopters.

With the shift toward front-line targets, U.S. jets spared Kabul Sunday for the first time since the bombing was launched Oct. 7, aimed at rooting out bin Laden and his chief lieutenants in the al-Qaida terrorist network and punishing the Taliban for sheltering him.

However, the jets returned before dawn yesterday and dropped at least 10 bombs on targets in the north of the city. Huge blasts shook buildings in the center of the capital.

With pressure mounting to break the Taliban grip on the country, U.S. jets have shifted major efforts from cities to Taliban positions that fend off the opposition northern alliance - especially those units around the capital Kabul and the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif.

Losing those cities would be a major setback for the Taliban, who have refused to hand over Osama bin Laden, chief suspect in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Along the front near Kabul, U.S. jets roared in at least twice during the day yesterday, bombarding Taliban positions in parched, abandoned villages about 25 miles north of the capital.

Bombs sent up plumes of black smoke and dust over the countryside, littered with rusting military equipment from Afghanistan's two decades of conflict. The Taliban held their ground and responded with mortar fire toward alliance positions.

Opposition spokesman Ashraf Nadeem also reported daylong U.S. attacks against Taliban positions in Dar-e-Suf in Samagan province, about 30 miles east of Mazar-e-Sharif, and around the Kishanday district southeast of the city.

There was no opposition advance around either Kabul or Mazar-e-Sharif after the airstrikes. Opposition forces have been trying unsuccessfully to capture Mazar-e-Sharif, which would cut Taliban supply lines in the north and enable anti-Taliban units to receive weapons and ammunition from Uzbekistan to the north.

"Our efforts clearly are to assist those on the ground occupy more ground," Rumsfeld said in Washington.

During a press conference in Islamabad on Sunday, the Taliban envoy Zaeef claimed Washington was playing down the number of civilian casualties from the air campaign.

"It is clear that American planes are targeting the Afghan people to punish the Afghan nation for having chosen an Islamic government," Zaeef said. "America has resorted to genocide of the Afghans."

Opposition commanders were clearly pleased to see American jets striking Taliban positions and expressed hope there would be more attacks.

One commander, Bismillah Khan, pointed to strikes Monday on two Taliban forts outside Mazar-e-Sharif. "We are happy because these two bases were major fortifications," he said. "And now we are optimistic about launching a successful

attack."

The United States has been reluctant to allow the opposition to enter Kabul until Afghan factions had agreed on a broad-based government to replace the Taliban.

Pakistan had been urging the United States to restrain the alliance, arguing that the ethnic minority Tajik and Uzbek-dominated coalition would never be accepted by the Pashtun majority, which forms the core of the Taliban.

Opposition figures were also widely discredited after the brutal infighting that marked their four-year rule. An estimated 50,000 people were killed in Kabul until the Taliban ousted the alliance from the capital in 1996.

However, little progress has been made in forming a new government. More than two weeks of air attacks have also failed to break the Taliban grip on most of the country or prompt any major defections in their ranks.

By the time Ramadan ends, the brutal Afghan winter will have set in and many of the roads and mountain passes will be blocked by snow, making military operations difficult.

The Taliban have insisted they remain firmly in control. The movement's supreme leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, issued a statement yesterday expressing condolences to families who had lost members in the American bombardment.

"We are not afraid of death because martyrdom is a great gift of God," Omar said in a statement distributed in Kabul. "Every man has to die one day, but we pray that we should die a martyr."