WASHINGTON/BANGI - US warplanes pounded tunnels and caves in Afghanistan's mountains on Friday and the Pentagon said it had dropped a devastating "Daisy Cutter" bomb south of the Taleban stronghold of Kandahar as the United States stepped up the hunt for Osama bin Laden.
The US military said up to
70 long-range bombers and tactical jets concentrated strikes on Kandahar and the mountains of southern Afghanistan.
American B-52s also bombed the besieged northern city of Kunduz where thousands of Taleban foreign fighters loyal to bin Laden are surrounded by Northern Alliance forces.
The Alliance said it had suspended an assault on Kunduz to give the Taleban more time to surrender, but would resume attacks on the city if there was no deal by early tomorrow morning (NZ time).
"We have given them more time, until tomorrow afternoon. Otherwise, if there isn't a result after these negotiations, the fighting will resume," Northern Alliance Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah.
The US military's Central Command said the 15,000-pound BLU-82 bomb, called a "Daisy Cutter," was dropped near Kandahar on Wednesday. It was only the third time the weapon -- which produces a blast like that of a small nuclear bomb and devastates an area 600 yards wide -- had been used in Afghanistan.
"A great portion of that bomb's effectiveness is its psychological impact on troops," said Maj. Brad Lowell, a spokesman for US Central Command. "Its intentions are to damage where it hits, and for the troops that can actually see it hit, it has a great psychological impact."
Lowell said US jets were also systematically targeting caves and tunnels that might be used as hiding places by bin Laden and his al Qaeda network, blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States that killed about 4,000 people.
Washington has offered up to $US25 million for information leading to the capture of bin Laden and his top lieutenants.
In a sign of the mounting pressure on Kandahar, the so-called spiritual home of the Taleban, conflicting reports emerged on the whereabouts of the fundamentalist Islamic group's spiritual leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, bin Laden's main Afghan protector.
In Spin Boldak near the Pakistani border, Taleban official Mullah Sayed Haqqani said Mullah Omar had left the city, leaving his deputy in charge.
But the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) quoted Mullah Omar's spokesman, Tayab Agha, as saying, "He is still in Kandahar and still has contact with his fighters."
Most of the Taleban's remaining forces are massed in Kandahar. An estimated 15,000 Taleban fighters, including several thousand Arabs, Pakistanis and Chechens linked to al Qaeda, are also besieged in Kunduz, their last bastion in the north of the country. They have been encircled by Northern Alliance forces for more than a week.
The foreign fighters, expecting no mercy from the opposing Afghan forces who loathe them, are said to be resisting surrender, despite fragmented negotiations between some Taleban and Northern Alliance leaders that have dragged on for days.
US B-52 bombers pounded Kunduz again on Thursday after the Alliance delayed a large-scale assault on the city, amid reports of a split between rival ethnic factions within the U.S.-backed forces.
A Taleban spokesman said radical militia had reached surrender terms on Thursday with warlord Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, an ethnic Uzbek besieging the west of Kunduz, but forces loyal to ousted President Burhanuddin Rabbani, an ethnic Tajik, were not satisfied and had launched several attacks.
East of Kunduz, a Reuters camera team near Taloqan saw B-52s fly overhead and heard bombing as plumes of smoke rose from the city.
Kunduz and Kandahar are the only two major Afghan cities still in the hands of the Taleban, whose rule of the country has crumbled under relentless US bombing raids and spectacular battlefield gains by the Northern Alliance.
Helped by U.S air raids to punish the Taleban for harbouring bin Laden, the Alliance now controls most of the country. Yet it remains not only internally divided but also far from representative of Afghanistan as a whole.
- REUTERS
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Third 'Daisy Cutter' bomb dropped on Afghanistan
WASHINGTON/BANGI - US warplanes pounded tunnels and caves in Afghanistan's mountains on Friday and the Pentagon said it had dropped a devastating "Daisy Cutter" bomb south of the Taleban stronghold of Kandahar as the United States stepped up the hunt for Osama bin Laden.
The US military said up to
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