Escalating the campaign in Afghanistan, US forces sent a pair of AC-130 gunships to attack a Taliban headquarters and troop complex in Kandahar and struck troop concentrations around Kabul in intense raids that extended into daylight hours Tuesday, defense officials told AFP.
Taliban said early in the day that gunships were used in the attacks.
"They're still pretty robust," a senior defense official said of the raids Tuesday after one of the heaviest nights of air strikes since the start of the campaign on October 7.
The AC-130 gunship attacked a headquarters and troop complex in the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar overnight, said a second defense official, who, like the other official would speak only on condition of anonymity.
It was the first open use of US special forces in the campaign and the clearest sign yet that US forces feel confident enough of their control of the skies to risk low altitude attacks, despite the danger posed by Taliban shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles, said the agency.
US air forces have been concentrating their attacks on Taliban troops and equipment around Kabul and Kandahar, paving the way for operations by opposition ground forces and possibly for selective raids by US or British special forces.
About 50 tactical aircraft and 10 long-range bombers took part in air attacks overnight Monday, which struck concentrations of troops and equipment that were being gathered for deployment, military marshaling areas and surface-to-air missile storage sites, the senior defense official said.
A total of two AC-130s were used in Monday night's attacks around Kandahar, another defense official said.
The aircraft, a propeller plane mounted with side-firing cannons, can saturate an area with torrents of devastating fire or pick out and hit individual targets with pinpoint accuracy.
On Tuesday, US warplanes launched a daylight bombing raid on Kabul, with residents of the Afghan capital reporting two loud explosions inside the city, said AFP.
The planes roared over Kabul around 1:30pm (0900 GMT), drawing a barrage of anti-aircraft fire from Taliban gunners.
Earlier, US warplanes bombed targets outside Afghanistan's capital, as Washington continued with strikes that have so far failed to achieve their objective: to kill or flush out Osama bin Laden and punish his Taliban protectors.
As a low-flying Air Force Special Forces AC-130 gunship concentrated its fire on targets in the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar on Monday, the Taliban's civil war foes said they were closing in on the key northern town of Mazar-i-Sharif, reported Reuters.
US-led forces used helicopters in all-night raids on the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar, a Taliban official told AFP on Tuesday.
"Kandahar was bombarded for the whole night by helicopters and jet planes," said the head of the Taliban's information agency, Abdul Hanan Hemat.
The United States said on Monday that it had deployed an AC-130 gunship in a raid on Taliban forces around Kandahar, but had not made any announcement about the use of helicopters, said the agency.
US-led forces attacking Kandahar hit a clinic in the Daman district of the city, killing at least five people, a Taliban official told AFP Tuesday.
The official was quoted as saying another nine civilians had been killed when a bomb struck a residential area in the Panjwaee district of the city.
However, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld described Taliban's reports of hundreds of civilian casualties as "ridiculous."
The Taliban earlier said that 200 villagers were killed as US warplanes bombed their village near Jalalabad.
Kabul's electricity supply was cut off indefinitely after the US bombed the city's main power station, a Taliban official said Tuesday.
"We cannot get the power supply to come back on," he told AFP. He said the power station in the northeast of Kabul had been bombed late on Monday.
Electricity has been cut at dusk every night since the US bombing began on October 7, in what had been a defensive move designed to ensure there were no lights which could give the bombers guidance.
But the power did not come back on Tuesday as usual around dawn.
The Taliban said bombing earlier this week had disabled the city's international telephone exchange.
"Targetting electricity supply and international telephone lines is against international law," the official said. "This can only hurt ordinary people - it is really contemptible."
Northern Alliance Claims More Victories
The opposition Northern Alliance said on Monday that they had advanced to within four miles of the airport in the northern Taliban-held city of Mazar-i-Sharif.
Alliance General Abdul Rashid Dostum at the weekend he was preparing an offensive on the city that was his headquarters until Taliban captured it in 1998, according to Reuters.
The alliance claims its forces have recently taken two towns.
With casualties and hardships growing, Afghans fleeing the conflict for the safety of neighboring Pakistan say the US onslaught is shifting public opinion in favor of the Taliban.
"I've seen the bodies of women and children pulled out of the rubble of their homes," Abdul Wali, a shopkeeper from Kandahar, told the agency when he arrived in the Pakistani city of Quetta.
"I have been to funerals too. People are getting angry," he added. "They are starting to believe what the Taliban tell them - that this is a war by non-Muslims against the Islamic world."
The Taliban said on Monday that bin Laden and their movement's leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, were alive and well - Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
