- KABUL (AFP) - A Red Cross
warehouse was destroyed Tuesday in a US air raid on Kabul, fuelling concerns
over the accuracy of the "targeted" military campaign in Afghanistan
and its impact on the civilian population.
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- The destruction of the Red Cross facility, which seriously
injured one staff member, came as the US-led offensive took a new turn
with special forces gunships zeroing in on Taliban militia fighters in
the first low-level aerial attacks of the nine-day campaign.
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- The Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross
(ICRC) lodged a formal complaint with the US embassy in Pakistan after
its Kabul warehouse was apparently hit by a bomb on Tuesday afternoon.
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- "There is no question about the ICRC's activities
... Military targets should be hit but civilian targets should not be hit,"
ICRC head of delegation for Afghanistan Robert Monin told AFP in Islamabad.
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- ICRC spokeswoman Macarena Aguilar Rodriguez said in Geneva
that the warehouse was marked with the Red Cross emblem.
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- "It was not a legitimate target, that's clear,"
she said.
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- The White House would not immediately confirm the bombing
of the ICRC storage unit, saying it might have been hit by falling anti-aircraft
ordinance.
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- It was the second aid facility to be destroyed since
the bombing campaign against the network of terrorist suspect Osama bin
Laden and his Taliban protectors began on October 7.
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- White House spokesman Ari Fleischer also ruled out any
pause in the aerial campaign, despite a reported appeal from the Taliban
for a let up.
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- "The president is not pursuing such a course because
he does not think that it would be constructive," Fleischer told reporters.
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- Residents in the southern Taliban stronghold of Kandahar
said intense US raids continued throughout the day with planes buzzing
overhead and repeated explosions around the southern city.
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- Targets inside the capital Kabul were hit in the early
afternoon and late evening.
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- The daytime raids followed all-night attacks involving
at least two AC-130 gunships -- a heavily-armoured plane with formidable
cannon firepower and a helicopter-like ability to move slowly over battlegrounds.
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- US defence officials said the planes, which can circle
around a target using infrared sensors and radar to direct a precise deluge
of cannon fire, were used against a Taliban troop complex in Kandahar.
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- Experts said deployment of the AC-130s could also indicate
that US forces were preparing to send ground troops to hunt bin Laden --
prime suspect in the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.
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- The head of the Taliban's information agency, Abdul Hanan
Hemat, said the Kandahar raids left 33 civilians dead, five after a medical
clinic was bombed.
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- US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had earlier described
Taliban figures for civilian casualties as "ridiculous" and dismissed
claims that more than 200 people had died last week in the eastern village
of Kadam.
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- Rumsfeld said tunnelled-out caves stuffed with munitions
had been destroyed in the village, sparking massive secondary explosions
which may have damaged nearby villages.
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- But foreign journalists who were taken to Kadam over
the weekend said they could see at least one crater amid the devastation.
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- In Kabul, at least seven loud explosions were heard early
Tuesday, one causing a huge plume of black smoke in the north of the city
where a military compound is believed to be located.
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- Kabul's beleaguered population had woken to find their
electricity cut off after bombs struck the main power station, but by late
afternoon it had been restored.
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- The anti-Taliban Northern Alliance has offered to cooperate
with the US air attacks but its ground forces just 50 kilometres (30 miles)
north of Kabul have remained idle.
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- Sporadic fighting continued Tuesday near the airport
outside the strategic northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, south of the border
with Uzbekistan.
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- "We are near Mazar-i-Sharif airport. We expect to
take the city within the next day or two, but we will do it gradually,"
opposition commander Mohammad Atta said by satellite telephone from the
frontline.
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- "Once Mazar is captured, the other provinces of
the north -- Balkh, Samangan, Faryab and lastly Kunduz -- with fall very
quickly in the coming weeks," he added.
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- US Secretary of State Colin Powell met Tuesday with Pakistan
President Pervez Musharraf in an effort to consolidate Islamabad's support
for the campaign.
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- After their talks, Musharraf reiterated Islamabad's backing
for military action, saying "we will certainly carry on cooperating
as long as the operation lasts."
- But he told a press conference that Pakistan believed
the campaign should be "short and targeted."
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