WASHINGTON/KABUL (REUTERS) — The United States, hoping to hasten the downfall of Afghanistan?s Taliban rulers, said Sunday it had sent in more special forces to help U.S. warplanes target front-line fighters defending key cities against opposition guerrillas.
U.S. aircraft began the fifth week of daily raids as Washington pressed its campaign to destroy both the Taliban and the allied al Qaeda network, blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks on America in which about 4,800 people were killed.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said damage inflicted so far had crippled Afghanistan?s hard-line Muslim rulers to the point that they could no longer be regarded as a proper government, but that the al Qaeda network they were harboring still posed a threat to global security.
U.S. health officials, so far unable to end an anthrax bioterror campaign that has killed four people, said key front-line medical workers were being vaccinated against the more serious disease: smallpox.
While stressing there were no signs of an outbreak of smallpox, officials for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said a crash training program had started to teach health workers about a disease eradicated throughout the world in 1981.
Foreign-aid workers estimated up to 300 fighters of the ruling Afghan militia have been wounded in the last week of bombing runs focusing on helping Afghanistan?s Northern Alliance opposition by targeting Taliban front-line fighters.
U.S. Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the bombing raids should be improved by the presence in Afghanistan of more U.S. specialists who would be able to pin point Taliban trenches and other targets for air strikes.
SPECIAL FORCES TEAMS INSERTED BY NIGHT
?The more teams we get on the ground, the more effectively we will bring air power to bear on the Taliban?s lines,? he said in a television interview. ?Just last night, the night before, we put in a couple more teams.?
Officials previously reported up to 100 U.S. special forces troops in Afghanistan and Rumsfeld has said he would like to see a significant increase in their numbers.
The defense secretary, making a lightning tour of five key states backing the U.S. offensive in Afghanistan, told reporters in Islamabad the Taliban ?is not really functioning as a government as such.?
?As a military force, they have concentrations of power that exist. They have military capabilities that exist. They are using their power in enclaves … to impose their will.?
Rumsfeld, who flew later Sunday to India, arrived in the subcontinent as the decades-old Kashmir dispute between Pakistan and India, both nuclear weapons powers, erupted in renewed fighting.
India said it exchanged heavy fire with Pakistan across the cease-fire line in Kashmir and that at least 35 people were killed in clashes throughout the disputed Himalayan region.
Border firing has continued despite strong U.S. pressure on two of the main players in Washington?s anti-terror coalition to tone down hostile talk during the campaign against al Qaeda, whose members are accused of hijacking the aircraft that were rammed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in September.
SAUDI ANGER AT MEDIA CRITICISM
In other signs of diplomatic tension over the war, Saudi Arabia?s Crown Prince Abdullah lashed out at critical media reports, accusing the U.S. newspapers of trying to drive a wedge between the Gulf Arab state and the United States.
Since the Sept. 11 plane attacks, U.S. media have criticized Saudi Arabia, a key U.S. ally in the region, for apparently not clamping down on extremist Muslim groups.
?The newspapers that are writing about us (Muslims) and the kingdom are all conspirators,? Abdullah told a gathering of education officials in a speech broadcast on state television.
The crown prince quoted President Bush as telling him in a telephone conversation that such reports sought to ?break the ties between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United States and to distort the kingdom?s reputation.?
The lack of detail from the traditionally secretive kingdom about its moves against groups and individuals named by the United States as supporters of terrorism has fueled the criticism in the U.S. media.
A host of European leaders swept Sunday into London for dinner with British Prime Minister Tony Blair and talks on the war on terrorism.
Among those attending were French President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, Spain?s Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi, Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana.
In Central Asia, aid workers in contact with Kabul said between 200 and 300 Taliban fighters were being treated in military hospitals for wounds inflicted by the bombing of Taliban front-line positions north of the capital.
Military experts said that with the number of wounded at that level, the death toll would be between 30 and 50.
But the Northern Alliance said that despite the bombing, the Taliban had recaptured some areas lost to the opposition only a day earlier.
TALIBAN REPORTS GAINS
Taliban officials reported gains on the ground near Aq Kupruk, some 45 miles south of the strategic northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, near the border with Uzbekistan.
The Taliban have answered all questions on the numbers of casualties among their lightly armed, turbaned fighters by saying the number of injured is extremely small.
Warplanes circled above the Afghan capital Kabul on Monday and fired at least two missiles, but there was no immediate indication of what damage they caused.
The distant sound of small-arms fire followed the attack, which appeared to have targeted the northwest outskirts of the city. Witnesses said they could hear but not see jets in the overcast sky and what sounded like helicopter gunships.
In the United States, authorities said trace amounts of anthrax were found at a mailroom in the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Washington, but it was unlikely the center?s 200 patients were at risk of exposure.
The anthrax outbreak has infected 17 people in the last month, killing four of them, and stoked fears about U.S. vulnerability to attack by germ warfare.
Referring to the smallpox precautions, CDC director Jeffrey Koplan said the health service had for several years been trying to enhance its ability to cope with bioterrorism.
?However, since September 11, we?ve certainly accelerated that,? Koplan told CNN?s Late Edition. ?We have increased the number of people we have who are capable, trained and ready to go out to investigate smallpox outbreaks, should they occur.?
CDC officials said dozens of medical workers were receiving smallpox vaccinations.
