BAGRAM, Afghanistan?U.S. jets dive-bombed Taliban positions on the front line north of the Afghan capital Thursday, eluding at least one missile and sending thick columns of black smoke climbing into a cloudless sky. Warplanes later pounded Kabul in the strongest attack on the city in days.
The warplanes repeatedly struck targets near Kabul’s airport, the center and to the north and west. The assault lasted past midnight and involved at least 10 waves of warplanes. Gunners for the ruling Taliban responded with heavy salvos of anti-aircraft fire.
Bombing to the north of the capital was for control of the strategic Bagram airport?held by the opposition northern alliance but of no use because of Taliban fighters in the hills around it.
Driving the Taliban away from positions around the airport would enable the alliance to fly in troops, ammunition and supplies for an attack on Kabul, about 30 miles away.
U.S. jets were also in action Thursday in the skies near Taliban-held Mazar-e-Sharif, striking Taliban positions to the south and east of the strategic city, whose capture by the northern alliance would open up crucial supply routes to Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
Opposition officials in Uzbekistan said a Taliban commander, Mullah Yusuf, and 10 other Taliban fighters were killed in the bombing near Mazar-e-Sharif. The opposition also claimed its troops captured the village of Shurchi on the southern outskirts of Mazar-e-Sharif and took 180 Taliban prisoners. The reports could not be independently confirmed.
Attacks Wednesday and Thursday marked the heaviest U.S. bombing yet in the front line area north of Kabul. Even so, opposition officials urged Washington to step up the strikes.
“If America wants to finish off terrorism and the Taliban in Afghanistan, they must bring in ground troops,” said Ezatullah, leader of a small group of opposition fighters north of Kabul. “This should be quick,” said Ezatullah, who like many Afghans uses one name.
Elsewhere, the Taliban said a U.S. bomb struck a bus early Thursday in the southern city of Kandahar, killing at least 10 civilians in a fiery explosion. The report also could not be independently confirmed.
Diplomats, regional leaders and Afghans worked Thursday to find a formula for governing this war-ravaged country after the Taliban falls.
Nearly 1,000 Afghans?many of them from influential southern tribes?approved a resolution in Peshawar, Pakistan, calling on the country’s former king, Mohammad Zaher Shah, to help form a multiethnic government.
They also demanded that “those foreigners who add more to our miseries” leave the country?a reference to bin Laden and his al Qaeda group.
President Bush launched the attacks Oct. 7 after the Taliban refused to hand over bin Laden, chief suspect in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.
The attacks Thursday north of Kabul were most intense along the Shomali Plain, where Taliban fighters and northern alliance forces face one another from rooftops barely 50 yards apart.
“I was standing here. I could feel the vibration,” said Farid Mohammed, a 20-year-old northern alliance fighter.
As the jets struck, two orange fire balls billowed up and a blaze sparked by one of the bombs raced up a foothill. Tracer bullets could be seen racing into the sky. A Taliban anti-aircraft missile barely missed two U.S. jets.