U.S. warplanes struck targets across Afghanistan yesterday in the heaviest day of bombing since the air campaign began, as huge explosions rocked the Afghan capital of Kabul and an Air Force AC-130 gunship fired on the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar, Pentagon officials said.
Fifty carrier-based fighter jets and 10 long-range bombers were joined for the first time by the AC-130, one of the most devastating weapons in the U.S. air arsenal. They struck targets throughout the day and into the night, aided in part by what Pentagon officials said was fresh information on Taliban and terrorist positions provided by opposition forces.
Defense officials declined to disclose the AC-130's mission around Kandahar, a city in southern Afghanistan that is one of the centers of power for the Taliban, the Islamic militia that rules most of the country. But the slow-moving aircraft, armed with a 150-mm howitzer and a Gatling gun capable of firing 1,800 rounds per minute, can lay down a withering carpet of fire against ground positions.
Although the pace of daily U.S. airstrikes against Afghanistan has not matched previous campaigns against Yugoslavia and Iraq, the attacks yesterday represented a marked escalation in the nine-day-old anti-terrorism war and signaled it could be entering a new phase.
The Pentagon also moved forcefully on another front -- the emerging war of information with the Taliban over the extent of civilian casualties and damage from the U.S. airstrikes.
As protests mounted in Pakistan and elsewhere in the Islamic world over the conduct of the U.S. campaign, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said U.S. forces had begun dropping leaflets over Afghanistan -- in the local languages of Pashto and Dari -- along with humanitarian food packets.
One leaflet shows a Western soldier in camouflage and helmet shaking hands with a man in traditional Afghan dress in front of a mountain scene. "The partnership of nations is here to assist the people of Afghanistan," the leaflet said.
Another depicted a radio transmitting tower and sketches of radios and included times and radio frequencies to tune to for what it calls "Information Radio" -- apparently a reference to broadcasts from a circling U.S. C-130 cargo plane that began shortly after U.S. and British forces launched the air campaign on Oct. 7.
Rumsfeld said the Taliban's charges that errant U.S. bombs have killed 300 civilians, including 200 in the eastern village of Karam, were "ridiculous." But he acknowledged that the United States has failed to justify the reasons for its anti-terrorism campaign with clarity with Muslims in the Middle East, South Asia and elsewhere.
"We have to do a better job," he said. "Our cause is just, what we're doing is right, and we have absolutely nothing to hide."
National security adviser Condoleezza Rice, seeking to buttress that point, went on a Middle Eastern news network and assured its audience, "We want it to be very clear that the war on terrorism is not a war against Islam."
Airstrikes were reported yesterday in regions across Afghanistan, which the Bush administration charges is harboring Saudi-born Islamic militant Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network. The United States blames bin Laden for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.
Carrier-based fighter jets and long-range bombers began their assault on Kabul before dawn. They dropped bombs throughout the day and into the night, sending residents fleeing an area north of the city near an abandoned military base, witnesses said.
Further attacks were reported in Jalalabad to the east, Kandahar to the south and Mazar-e Sharif to the north, where Gen. Abdurrashid Dostum, a Northern Alliance leader, drove within a few miles of the city's airport.
One senior official familiar with yesterday's targets said that the AC-130 was scheduled to be part of the mission. As of late last night, the official said he had not received reports about how it performed.
"We just felt that it was the appropriate weapons system for the mission," the official said. "It's basically a flying artillery piece. It tends to be very, very precise fire, pretty heavy fire, and very accurate fire."
Rumsfeld and Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, denied the Taliban's claim that 200 civilians had been killed in the village of Karam. Rumsfeld said the attack near Karam had destroyed an underground cave complex associated with the Taliban and al Qaeda.
Calling leaders of the Taliban and al Qaeda "accomplished liars," Rumsfeld said the strike on the cave complex was "unambiguous. It was into the tunnels, and it worked."
Myers said military officials were surprised the strike had detonated stored ammunition and touched off a raging underground fire in the complex that lasted for 3-1/2 to 4 hours. He said that reconnaissance photographs taken before the attack showed that Karam was "not heavily occupied," and that pictures taken afterward revealed no bomb craters in the village.
While the Pentagon asserts that most fixed targets associated with the Taliban and al Qaeda have been destroyed, Rumsfeld and other senior defense officials said the pace of airstrikes would not diminish. They said U.S. pilots would begin turning their sights on troop concentrations and other "emerging targets."
Rumsfeld said recent targets were "significantly enhanced" by information from Afghan opposition forces and had included Taliban troop concentrations for the last three or four days.
Military commanders from the Northern Alliance, a coalition of opposition forces that occupies parts of northern Afghanistan, have complained in recent days that the United States has not bombed Taliban troops dug in north of Kabul in defense of the capital. Rumsfeld attributed the lack of strikes to a dearth of reliable target information and implied that bombing raids against those forces were imminent.
"I suspect that in the period ahead," Rumsfeld said, "that's not going to be a very safe place to be."
One U.S. official, who asked not to be quoted by name, said officials planning the air campaign are in direct contact with the Northern Alliance, among other opposition groups. "Some of the information from the Northern Alliance has not been particularly useful, which may explain why there may have been a lack of activity in certain areas," the official said.
Another senior defense official said targeting has shifted from a relatively small number of "strategic" targets such as surface-to-air missile sites to an "unlimited" number of Taliban troop concentrations. "I don't know what the Taliban has in terms of troops -- 30,000 or 40,000," the official said. "But that's a lot of places to drop ordnance."
The Navy has four aircraft carriers in the area, with the USS Roosevelt heading toward the northern Indian Ocean after sailing through the Suez Canal on Saturday. Since the bombing began, the USS Enterprise and the USS Carl Vinson have been responsible for launching all the carrier-strike aircraft over Afghanistan.
Navy officials have yet to decide whether the Roosevelt will replace the Enterprise, which is nearing the end of its standard deployment, or whether all three carriers are needed. A fourth carrier, the USS Kitty Hawk, is near Afghanistan, in the Arabian Sea, for use as a possible launching platform for special operations helicopters. The Kitty Hawk was deployed to the region without its fighter jets.
During his Pentagon briefing, Rumsfeld said that he would try to gather additional details about an aborted strike against Mohamad Omar, the Taliban's leader, first reported this week by the New Yorker magazine.
According to the New Yorker,, a Predator unmanned aerial vehicle armed with Hellfire missiles and operated by the CIA identified a convoy of vehicles on the first night of bombing as belonging to Omar. After tracking the convoy to a building on the outskirts of Kabul, the magazine said, an assault by fighter bombers was ordered but ultimately called off by a military lawyer attached to the U.S. Central Command who had concerns about the rules of engagement.
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