KABUL, Afghanistan - Anti-Taliban fighters battled for control of Kandahar's airport yesterday as American bombers pounded suspected hideouts of Osama bin Laden in the rugged White Mountains near the border with Pakistan.
Fighters loyal to former Kandahar governor Gul Agha said they fought their
way into the airport compound but were pushed back by Taliban defenders, according to Agha's brother, Bismillah.
Kandahar is the Taliban's last major stronghold. Agha's forces have been advancing on the city from the south, while troops loyal to former deputy foreign minister Hamid Karzai have been closing in from the north.
U.S. Marines camped out about 70 miles southwest of Kandahar have not joined the fight since helicopter gunships attacked a Taliban convoy a week ago.
However, a Marine spokesman said three warship-based Harrier jets bombed another site in southern Afghanistan after being called in by a forward observer. It was unclear if the Harrier strike was linked to the fight for Kandahar.
Capt. David Romley said he did not have details of the target. He said the strike was called by someone other than the U.S. Marines, who turned a desert airfield into a base over a week ago.
Elsewhere, American bombers pounded the rugged area south of the city of Jalalabad near Tora Bora, the eastern cave complex in the White Mountains that, along with Kandahar, has become a focus of the hunt for bin Laden.
Also in Jalalabad late yesterday, four huge explosions could be heard from the direction of Farmada Farm, a former bin Laden stronghold seized by anti-Taliban Afghans last month.
A provincial security chief Mohammed Zeman said yesterday that U.S. warplanes bombed a guesthouse in Agom village, 15 miles, south of Jalalabad, on Sunday evening. He said seven of his fighters and five civilians were killed.
U.S. officials insist they are targeting Taliban and al-Qaida installations and accused the groups of endangering civilians by hiding among them.
Over the weekend, villagers in the region claimed that more than 100 people were killed in air raids that flattened many homes in the area south of Jalalabad.
As fighting intensifies around Kandahar, the United Nations said thousands of refugees have fled for rural villages or Pakistan about 70 miles to the southeast.
Peter Kessler, a spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, estimated 8,000 Afghans have reached the safety of neighboring Pakistan since the conflict intensified last week.
"It would appear that 2,000 people or more are leaving Kandahar province each day and are seeking assistance," Kessler said.
Those who have arrived at the Pakistan border outpost of Chaman talked of chaos and fear in Kandahar as well as on the roads east to Pakistan. The Taliban refuse to allow foreign journalists into the areas they control.
One refugee, Mohammed Nasim, said he saw the wrecks of half a dozen vehicles apparently destroyed by U.S. bombing on the road from Kandahar to the border. Other refugees have fled north to the capital, Kabul.
In Koenigswinter, Germany, talks on organizing post-Taliban rule in Afghanistan slowed yesterday as factions wrestled with a U.N. blueprint for a new, interim administration that still has no agreed names for who should fill its posts.
Envoys of the northern alliance, supporters of the former Afghan king and two smaller exile groups worked on the draft plan word by word into early yesterday and were to continue later in the day, a U.N. spokesman said.
The U.N. plan envisions a 29-member interim executive council to govern Afghanistan and an independent council of elders to convene a tribal gathering, or loya jirga, within six months, diplomats said.
The loya jirga would establish a transitional administration to govern for two years, paving the way for a democratic constitution and eventual elections.
In Kabul, the northern alliance agreed to suggest the names of four prominent Afghans to serve as head of a transitional government.
Deputy Prime Minister Abdur Rasool Sayyaf said the alliance submitted the names of Karzai; former transitional president Sibgatullah Mojadiddi and two supporters of former king Mohammed Zaher Shah - Abdul Sattar Sirat and Sayed Ahmed Gailini.
The alliance agreed last weekend to drop the name of its leader, Burhanuddin Rabbani, who served as president from 1992 until his ouster by the Taliban in 1996.
