- CHAMAN, Pakistan (Reuters) - U.S. aircraft over southern
Afghanistan have scattered $100 bills tucked into envelopes bearing a
picture
of President George W. Bush, witnesses said on Thursday. Some of the
envelopes
were carried by the wind and fluttered to earth over the Pakistan border
town of Chaman, sending people scrambling for the cash.
-
- "C-130 planes dropped white-coloured paper envelopes
with a photo of President Bush and two bills of $100 each," said Abdul
Hadi, a resident of Chaman on the border with southern Afghanistan.
-
- "They are actually dropping these over areas across
the border but a few were carried away by the wind to this side,"
Hadi said. "People pushed and fought with each other to get their
hands on the envelopes." The envelopes bore no message, the witnesses
said.
-
- The U.S. aircraft first dropped the envelopes on
Wednesday
afternoon and made a second run to drop their paper payloads on Thursday
morning.
-
- Southern Afghanistan used to be a stronghold of the
vanquished
Taliban government.
-
- The money was the latest message from the sky sent by
U.S. forces hunting fugitive Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden and his
main Taliban protector, the group's leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar.
-
- In recent weeks U.S. aircraft have dropped leaflets over
the same area depicting Mullah Omar as a dog, held on a leash by bin
Laden.
-
- Another crude cartoon dropped by U.S. forces showed
Taliban
leaders as pawns in the hands of bin Laden, playing on a chequered
chessboard
map of Afghanistan.
-
- Some of the earlier leaflets carried messages in the
Pashto and Dari languages such as, "Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda are
terrorists, they should not be given shelter, those providing shelter to
them will meet a horrible end."
-
- The whereabouts of both bin Laden, leader of the shadowy
al Qaeda militant network and prime suspect in the September 11 attacks
on New York and Washington, and Mullah Omar are a mystery.
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