KABUL/WASHINGTON (REUTERS) — Anti-Taliban forces pushed deeper into Afghanistan Wednesday, forcing the hard-line Islamic militia to the south, where control of their stronghold of Kandahar was apparently crumbling.
U.S. forces swooped in to rescue eight aid workers, including two Americans, who had been held by the Taliban since August and threatened with possible execution for allegedly propagating Christianity.
“Today we’ve got incredibly good news,” President Bush said after the aid workers were plucked from Afghanistan by military helicopters and taken to Pakistan. “Our United States military rescued eight humanitarian workers who had been imprisoned in Afghanistan.”
U.S. officials, determined to press the advantage, said they were prepared to send troops into the caves and mountains of southern Afghanistan in a guerrilla campaign to ferret out militant leader Osama bin Laden.
With battlefield advances outpacing political plans in the U.S. campaign to oust the Taliban for protecting the man blamed for September’s attacks on New York and Washington, the United Nations Security Council endorsed a political blueprint for a post-Taliban government and pointed the way to a multinational security force to guard major cities.
U.N. aid trucks rolled into the landlocked central Asian country after advances by the anti-Taliban opposition to provide vital relief to millions in danger of starving as winter closes in.
As U.S. special forces began spreading through southern Afghanistan, the Pentagon said it was too early to declare victory over the Taliban and bin Laden, blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks with hijacked airliners on New York and Washington that killed some 4,500 people.
But it did report bombing a building in Afghanistan where members of bin Laden’s al Qaeda network of militants were gathered, killing a number of people.
A Taliban spokesman had earlier said that bin Laden and his protector, Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, were both safe in the country and repeated that the Islamic militia would not turn their “guest” over to Washington.
CONFUSION OVER KANDAHAR
Just one day after opposition forces moved into the Afghan capital of Kabul, confusion reigned over the fate of Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second-largest city and a Taliban bastion.
The Northern Alliance ambassador in neighboring Tajikistan said the southern city had fallen to the opposition and tribal rebels. But Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said he had no information on whether anti-Taliban forces had taken control of the airfield there.
Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem told a Pentagon news briefing anti-Taliban groups were rebelling against Taliban control near Kandahar, but he said the outcome was not yet clear.
Alliance Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah earlier said the city was sliding into anarchy.
“There is complete chaos in Kandahar. It’s absolute confusion. The Taliban have lost control of the situation and no Taliban officials are to be found,” he told Iran state television.
The claims could not be independently verified. But if true, they would represent an enormous setback for the Taliban and al Qaeda, which have seen numerous towns and provinces turn to the opposition, reducing the Taliban’s control from 90 percent of the country to 20 percent in just five days.
