KABUL, Afghanistan?Frustrated by weeks of U.S. bombing that have failed to budge Taliban front lines, Afghanistan’s opposition forces plotted what they said Monday would be a major push on a vital Taliban held northern stronghold.
To bring it off, a spokesman of the northern-based opposition alliance stressed, “We will need American help.”
There were signs the United States was willing to provide that help.
In Washington, Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clark said the U.S. military extended its bombing toward the Afghan border with Tajikistan, where Taliban troops are holding back opposition forces from their objective?the strategic city of Mazar-e-Sharif.
As the U.S.-led air campaign in Afghanistan entered its fourth week, American warplanes also dropped six bombs in the afternoon about one to two miles behind Taliban lines near Bagram air base about 30 miles north of Kabul.
“I was sitting on my horse cart and saw American jets swoop down and drop bombs on the Bagram sector,” said Khan Shirin, a 22-year-old fighter from a vantage point on the main Bagram-Kabul road.
Taliban forces fired anti aircraft guns, and there were sporadic exchanges of fire between the Islamic militia and forces of the opposition northern alliance. Shirin said that the front line had been fairly quiet for much of the day.
Skies over Kabul were also quiet after a day of U.S. bombing that distraught residents said killed 13 civilians. U.S. jets hit Monday night around the southern city of Kandahar, with reports of “huge explosions” from strikes near the airport.
Kandahar?the headquarters of Afghanistan’s Taliban regime?has been struck repeatedly since the bombardment began Oct. 7, sparking the flight of residents. U.N. spokesman Khaled Mansour in Pakistan said Monday that reports describe the city of 500,000 as “deserted.”
Clark at the Pentagon said U.S. bombers were also trying to work systematically through the complex system of caves used by fighters from Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda terror network.
In Islamabad, Pakistan, Taliban Ambassador Abdul Salam Zaeef said the first phase of the American military campaign “had achieved no significant achievement that the Pentagon wished to achieve, except the genocide of Afghanistan people.”
The Pentagon has accused the Taliban of inflating civilian casualties, though it has expressed regret for any accidental civilian casualties in the bombing. The campaign targets Taliban and al Qaeda, accused in last month’s terror attacks in the United States.
Afghan opposition forces are complaining that U.S. bombing is too light to drive out Taliban forces defending Kabul and the northern city of Mazar-e Sharif.
Unhappy at the pace of efforts to capture Taliban-held territory, key opposition commanders assembled Sunday for a five-hour session to sketch out a major offensive on Mazar-e-Sharif, opposition spokesman Ashraf Nadeem said in a telephone interview.
Commanders also talked of joint offensives on the surrounding provinces of Balkh and Samangan, Nadeem said.
Present, he said, were longtime figures in the opposition’s long-stalled struggle: Uzbek leader Rashid Dostum, Shiite Muslim leader Mohammed Mohaqik and Atta Mohammed, commander for deposed Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani.