Associated Press

The body of Bobahel, 35, is shown after he was killed yesterday by a rocket launched by the Taliban, which hit a market in Charikar, northern Afghanistan, 30 miles north of the capital Kabul. Two people were killed and 14 others wounded by the rocket.

Wednesday October 24, 2001

BAGRAM, Afghanistan - U.S. jets struck Taliban front lines and an Osama bin Laden stronghold north of Kabul yesterday - attacks the opposition hopes will open the way for an advance on Kabul. But Taliban troops held their ground, launching rockets and mortars toward positions held by the northern alliance.

Opposition and Taliban officials also reported U.S. attacks around the key northern city Mazar-e-Sharif, where an offensive last week by the opposition northern alliance faltered. The Taliban claimed they repulsed opposition attacks that followed the American bombardment.

American warplanes set fire to critical Taliban oil supplies in the Taliban headquarters in the southern city of Kandahar - said to be all but abandoned by its half million inhabitants after weeks of attacks.

President Bush initiated the air campaign Oct. 7 after the Taliban repeatedly refused to surrender bin Laden, chief suspect in last month's terror attacks in the United States.

British Secretary of Defense Geoff Hoon said yesterday that the military strikes on Afghanistan have destroyed nine of bin Laden's terrorist training camps and severely damaged nine airfields and 24 military garrisons.

In recent days, U.S. forces increasingly have shifted the brunt of their attacks to

Taliban positions on front lines outside Kabul and Mazar-e-Sharif, hoping to break Taliban defenses around the key cities.

Yesterday, U.S. jets streaked in high over the front line at Kabul, then swooped in to drop their bombs as villagers gawked and pointed.

"There it is," residents of the opposition-held community cried each time a white speck appeared in the sky. Nine blasts sounded, one after the other. Witnesses said at least five of those strikes hit the Taliban front line.

"God willing, these bombs will let us move into Kabul," declared one opposition

fighter, Saeed Rafik.

Some of the bombs struck the village of Uzbashi, an al-Qaida encampment near

Bagram, opposition spokesman Waisuddin Salik said. Arab fighters of bin Laden's network are believed to make up the core of Taliban forces at the front, north of the capital.

The bombing, however, seemed only to make the Taliban forces more aggressive. As U.S. jets thundered overhead, Taliban gunners opened up with mortars, rockets and artillery on alliance lines.

One Taliban rocket slammed into the public market at Charikar, 30 miles north of Kabul, killing two people - including a 60-year-old vegetable vendor - and injuring 14 others.

"We want the war to be finished and an end to the rockets of the Taliban," said Mohammad Nabi, whose son was slightly injured. "Let America bomb them."

Opposition commanders said the Taliban have reinforced their positions and moved them closer to alliance lines in hopes of making it more difficult for U.S. pilots to tell which are the right targets. On Monday, one bomb fell behind alliance lines, but there were no reports of casualties.

In the nearby village of Qalai Dasht, Taliban and northern alliance fighters face off against one another from roofs of mud huts barely 50 yards apart.

Gen. Baba Jan, the alliance commander of the Bagram brigade, said more airstrikes and "more coordination" with the Americans were needed to dislodge the Taliban and their al-Qaida allies.

Pakistan, a key Muslim ally in the anti-terror campaign, has opposed allowing the alliance to seize Kabul, fearing that the Tajik- and Uzbek-dominated movement will not be accepted by the Pashtun majority.

The alliance is made up of factions which fought against each other when they

controlled Kabul. The city was largely destroyed, and an estimated 50,000 people were killed before the Taliban captured the capital in 1996.

"We should not allow the kind of atrocities that prevailed in Afghanistan to return," Musharraf told a Lebanese television station Tuesday. He urged that Kabul be declared a neutral "because I see that maybe atrocities (could) start in Kabul" if the alliance captures the city.

Along the front, near Mazar-e-Sharif, a senior opposition commander, Ata Mohammed, said the alliance was massing troops for a major assault on the city, which the Taliban seized in 1998.

Speaking to reporters in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, by satellite telephone, he said a small number of Americans were in the area to coordinate airstrikes.

"We are expecting American airstrikes to back up the attack," he said.

Nevertheless, the alliance appeared to be facing stiff resistance around Mazar-e-Sharf. Taliban officials claimed their fighters had repulsed probing attacks launched after American air attacks yesterday.

Another opposition spokesman, Ibrahim Ghafoori, claimed alliance fighters advanced six to nine miles toward Mazar-e-Sharif in brisk fighting Monday and yesterday.

Opposition patrols had moved closer to the city last week, only to be pushed back by a strong Taliban counterattack.

"They had a very huge defeat some days ago and will not be able to attack," the

Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef, insisted in Islamabad. "Only the foreigners are encouraging attack at Mazar-e-Sharif."

In Kandahar, the South Asian Dispatch Agency reported U.S. jets struck an oil depot and a fuel convoy, sending a thick cloud of black smoke rising into the clear blue sky.

U.S. planes also targeted an asphalt plant, setting back Taliban efforts to repair the runway at Kandahar airport, which has been pounded repeatedly during the air campaign, the agency said.