US launches fresh air strikes

October 8, 2001

<h4>US launches fresh air strikes</h4>

United States forces have carried out a second wave of air strikes on targets in Afghanistan.

Defence officials said the attacks were aimed at the Taleban regime's military airfields and air defences.

American bomber aircraft and 15 Tomahawk cruise missiles were deployed. Taleban forces responded with anti-aircraft fire.

The attacks resumed almost exactly 24 hours after raids began on Sunday night.

The US has warned the United Nations Security Council that it could take action against other countries and organisations after the strikes on Afghanistan.

Monday night's attacks targeted the capital, Kabul, the Taleban stronghold of Kandahar in southern Afghanistan and the airport in the eastern city of Jalalabad.

The strategic northern town of Mazar-e-Sharif and Konduz have also reportedly been hit.

Some of the bombers flew directly from the US mainland, and others from the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia. British forces, while not directly involved, provided logistical support.

A BBC correspondent in Afghanistan said the second night of attacks appeared more sustained than the first.

In the Afghan capital Kabul, reports said power supplies had been cut and Taleban radio was urging residents to stay indoors and close their blinds.

Kabul residents reported bombs hitting targets on the outskirts of the city and near the airport. One eyewitness described three huge explosions.

The Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press agency said a bomb had fallen near the city's main hospital.

The Americans have been showing video tapes of the targets hit in Sunday's raids to reporters on board the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise

The BBC's Brian Barron says one tape shows a missile storage base blowing up in a spectacular explosion, sending a stray warhead careering across the landscape.

The US has declared its initial air assault on Afghanistan on Sunday night a great success.

President George W Bush said the operation was "executed as planned". But he added that it would be "a long war, that requires understanding and patience from the American people".

US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld said US and British forces had struck military aircraft, runways, missile launchers and "terrorist training camps" during Sunday's attacks.

Mr Rumsfeld insisted that every target attacked was a military target, and that Kabul was not attacked directly.

But he added: "We cannot yet state with certainty that we destroyed the dozens of military command and control and leadership targets we selected."

The Taleban said there were about 20 casualties in Kabul from Sunday's strikes, including women, children and elderly people.

The Taleban ambassador in Pakistan, Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, described the strikes as "a terrorist attack... not only against the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, but on the whole Muslim world".

Independent reports from Kabul have not confirmed the death toll, but bombs are said to have landed in a residential area in the centre of the city.

The attacks followed warnings from US officials that time was running out for the Taleban to hand over Bin Laden, whom the US accuses of organising the 11 September suicide attacks on New York and Washington that killed more than 6,000 people.

The UN World Food Programme has temporarily suspended its food convoys travelling into drought-stricken Afghanistan because of the attacks on the country.

US forces have begun air-dropping food and medical aid to the people of Afghanistan.