Cheney warns of big casualties at home

19 Oct, 2001 11:28 AM3 mins to read

The United States-led campaign against terrorism was last night being fought on two distinct fronts, living up to its billing as a different kind of war.

As US bombers and gunships gave Afghanistan an old-fashioned pounding for the 12th day, authorities in the US were battling waning public confidence after a week of terrorism scares and confirmed anthrax cases.

Fears of unconventional terrorist attacks spread from germ warfare to nuclear safety yesterday when a big power plant was put on top alert.

Officials later dismissed the threat to the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania, after first calling it "credible".

But the incident further jangled American nerves, frayed by the terrorist strikes on New York and Washington and three dozen cases of anthrax or exposure to it.

In Washington, US Vice-President Dick Cheney warned Americans that life would never be the same and more attacks should be expected.

"For the first time in our history, we will probably suffer more casualties here at home in America than among our troops overseas."

Harrisburg International Airport and Lancaster airport near the nuclear plant were shut for four hours and the plant itself, site of the worst nuclear accident in US history in 1979, was on heightened alert for about eight hours.

Any attack on the plant, which has a heavily reinforced containment shell, might seek to release deadly radioactivity into the air.

Yesterday, flights were banned in a 32km radius around the airports and military aircraft were sent to protect the plant.

A CBS assistant to TV News anchor Dan Rather tested positive for skin anthrax, making the company the third network to be exposed to the potentially deadly bacteria. Six people have tested positive.

The US Government offered a $US1 million ($2.41 million) reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for mailing anthrax.

Five NZ Post mail centres were last night given an anthrax-free rating by scientists. White powder that sparked alerts was thought to be flour or talcum powder.

In Afghanistan, American jets bombarded Kabul and Kandahar, raising the death toll to 70 in just 24 hours of strikes on the cities.

Seven passers-by were killed when a bomb struck an ammunition dump north of Kabul, setting off rounds of ammunition. A strike that hit homes in the capital killed at least five civilians.

The US flew armed, unmanned Predator spy planes, equipped with anti-tank missiles, for the first time in combat.

In the first reported death of a close associate of Osama bin Laden, a British Islamic group said Egyptian militant Abu Baseer al-Masri was killed near Jalalabad on Sunday.

He had been wanted for an assassination attempt on a former Egyptian prime minister.

The Afghan Islamic Press said a grenade he was holding exploded after a US bomb attack.

Taleban claims that between 600 and 900 have died in the US raids were decried as false by US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

But as confirmation came that US ground forces were inside Afghanistan, al Qaeda military commander Mohammed Atef warned that soldiers' bodies would be dragged through the streets if caught.

"America will not realise its miscalculations until its soldiers are dragged in Afghanistan like they were in Somalia."

In 1993, guerrillas who shot down two US helicopters over Mogadishu killed 18 soldiers and dragged some of their bodies through the streets.

Anxiety about further terrorism on US soil rose as four bin Laden supporters were sent to prison for life, without parole, for the 1998 bombings of two US embassies in Africa that killed 231 people.

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