Britain said Monday that four of its troops had been injured during military operations in Afghanistan, and announced that it was scaling back plans to deploy more forces to the country. Meanwhile, US troops moved on to the last Taliban stronghold of defiant Taliban, with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld saying that US troops have made arrests, said reports.
AFP quoted British Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon as saying that the four men had been injured during the past few days, although not at Mazar-i-Sharif, the northern Afghan city where Taliban prisoners staged a bloody weekend uprising.
One of the wounded men was in "more serious" condition than the others, but was stable. All have been evacuated back to Britain.
A ministry of defense spokesman said they had all been injured in the same area.
It is likely the men were special forces, possibly of the elite Special Air Service, as regular army units have remained holed up at Bagram airfield, near the Afghan capital Kabul.
FIRST MAJOR US GROUND OPERATION UNDERWAY
Meanwhile, around 1,000 US Marines landed by helicopter Monday south of Kandahar in the first major ground operation of the Afghan war designed to choke off the Taliban's last bastion, according to the Associated Press and agencies.
The city was reportedly under intense US bombardment as the troops and materiel landed near an airport to the south of the city and tribal uprisings flared elsewhere in the southern province.
Senior Northern Alliance officials in the capital said terror suspect Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar were trapped in Kandahar and surrounded, but this was not confirmed by US officials, said the agency.
"The objective is to seize an airfield which they have done," said Lieutenant Colonel David Lapan, a Pentagon spokesman.
Local tribal forces, possibly backed by US troops, captured at least one main town along the road east to the border with Pakistan as the Marines were ferried into Kandahar throughout the night and early morning.
All traffic to the border was cut, sealing a key escape route for leaders of the Taliban or bin Laden's Al Qaeda network in Kandahar, while the bombing reportedly severed their communications with other Afghan provinces.
The AP quoted US President George W Bush as saying, “We're smoking them out, they're running and now we're going to bring them to justice.”
BUSH TELLS AMERICANS TO EXPECT LOSS OF LIFE
Bush cautioned that, as the war moves into this new, potentially more dangerous phase, “America must be prepared for loss of life.”
“Obviously, no president or commander in chief hopes anybody loses life in the theater, but it's going to happen,” Bush said. He spoke in the White House Rose Garden after meeting with two freed US humanitarian aid workers who had been imprisoned in Afghanistan.
And US forces have arrested and interrogated people in Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told a press conference Monday.
"We have done some interrogating," Rumsfeld told the press briefing at the Pentagon.
RUSSIANS IN KABUL
AFP also reported that a convoy of Russian military vehicles swept into Kabul Monday, with a fleet of 13 trucks arriving in the Afghan capital in the early evening.
It was not immediately known if the blue-jacketed personnel on board were soldiers, which would mark the return of Russian forces for the first time since Soviet troops retreated from the country 12 years ago.
Moscow announced earlier Monday that 12 Russian military transport planes had delivered aid and technical support to Afghanistan to reopen an embassy in the capital, and to provide humanitarian aid, said the agency.
The aircraft were seen arriving mid-morning at Bagram airfield 50 kilometers (30 miles) north of Kabul.
"We are Russians," one driver said when the convoy of unmarked military vehicles parked on a roadside in central Kabul.
One member of the group, who had been in talks with Northern Alliance soldiers where they were parked, said briefly "we are working" and refused to discuss the mission further, according to AFP – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
