US jets pound heart of Kabul

US jets targeted the heart of Afghanistan's capital, attacking a Taliban tank unit and other military installations in the central district of the city.

In the north, opposition forces were reported to be fighting hard for a strategic Taliban–held city, pressing their first major offensive since the US–led airstrikes began.

In California, U.S. President George W. Bush told a flag–waving crowd that American bombing, now in their 12th day, was "paving the way for friendly troops on the ground."

It was Bush's clearest ng a recognized role in the US–led campaign.

American pilots opened Thursday's airstrikes before dawn in Kabul, drawing heavy anti–aircraft fire as they pounded areas around the presidential palace and beyond.

Taliban Information Ministry officials said the strikes were blasting the city's Shash Tarak district, near the long–abandoned U.S. Embassy and home to a Taliban tank unit. The Defense Ministry and a Taliban garrison also are in the area.

Flames from the direction of the airport lit up the night sky. On Wednesday, US. pilots struck a fuel depot near the airport, sending inky black smoke billowing over Kabul.

To Afghanistan's south, US strikes pounded targets in the center of the Taliban's headquarters city of Kandahar, Taliban officials reported. Residents said by telephone Wednesday that Taliban fighters in the city were handing out weapons to civilians.

The southern city of Kandahar also was reported under fresh U.S. attacks Thursday, with the airport and Taliban militia sites coming under fire.

The United States and Britain launched their air campaign Oct. 7 after the Taliban refused a final ultimatum by Bush to surrender bin Laden, chief suspect in last month's terror attacks in the United States.

Pentagon officials have credited the bombing with clearing the way for a now days–old offensive pressed by the Taliban's opponents at Mazar–e–Sharif, the largest city of the north.

The Taliban said heavy fighting was still raging. A Taliban Information Ministry official in Kabul, Abdul Hanan Himat, acknowledged the Taliban had lost control of some areas around Mazar–e–Sharif – but insisted the Islamic regime's forces had pushed the opposition back at one of the fronts around the city.

Opposition forces lost the stronghold to the Taliban in 1998, giving the strict Islamic regime control of 90 percent of Afghanistan. Retaking Mazar–e–Sharif would let the opposition consolidate vital supply routes along the borders with Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, from which they obtain weapons.

In Washington, defense officials said US special forces units themselves were now in place to join the battle on the ground, if called for.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the officials said helicopter–borne special operations forces were put aboard the USS Kitty Hawk in the Indian Ocean several days ago – ready for any possible search–and–destroy missions against bin Laden and his Taliban allies.

The officials stressed that did not necessarily mean the troops were about to enter combat.

In neighboring Pakistan, a pro–Taliban Muslim leader said tens of thousands of young volunteers were ready to come to the Taliban's aids if U.S. troops do join the fight.

"The day American troops land on the soil of Afghanistan, our youths are fully trained, and their minds and their hearts are filled with the feelings of holy war," declared Maulana Samiul Haq, president of the Afghan Defense Council, a coalition of 35 pro–Taliban groups.

With the fight escalating, international aid officials based in Pakistan appealed for a break in the bombing so relief groups can rush food to desperate Afghan civilians before winter snows close roads next month. "Time's almost run out," Barbara Stocking of Oxfam International said.

A UNWorld Food Program official in Peshawar, Pakistan said Thursday the Taliban had returned one of two commandeered wheat warehouses, together holding about half the agency's wheat stores in Afghanistan.

Stores in the returned warehouse in Kabul appeared intact, but there was no word of the captured warehouse in Kandahar, WFP official Michael Huggins said.