Fighting Intensifies Around Kandahar

The battle to topple the Taliban in southern Afghanistan intensified Saturday as tribal warriors began a drive to encircle Kandahar, the embattled regime’s spiritual capital, and fierce U.S. bombing of the city sent residents fleeing to the Pakistan border.

There were also reports from northeastern Afghanistan that U.S. aircraft may have hit civilians as the hunt intensified for Osama bin Laden and members of his Al Qaeda terrorist network.

Afghan officials and witnesses said scores of villagers were killed in airstrikes in the vicinity of Tora Bora, a nest of caves and trenches where the elusive terror mastermind could be hiding. But Defense Department officials Saturday denied involvement in the casualties.

“We’ve checked the imagery, and the closest airstrikes were 20 miles from Kama Ado,” Defense Department spokesman Jim Turner said, referring to one village reportedly damaged in bomb strikes. “It’s a false story.”

The Pentagon also knocked down a Taliban claim early Saturday that its forces had shot down a U.S. warplane over Kandahar. “All our aircraft are accounted for,” Turner said.

In the south, troops commanded by ethnic Pushtun warrior Gul Agha Shirzai were leading the move toward Kandahar. Shirzai’s forces were headed toward the perimeter of the main airport, on the city’s southern edge, while men under the control of another Pushtun chief, Hamid Karzai, were moving toward the city’s northern edge.

“We’re pushing forward,” Khalid Pushtoon, a Shirzai aide, said in a satellite phone interview. “We’re about [2 1/2 miles] short of the airport. Our fighters are in the suburbs of the airport right now. There’s heavy fighting going on. We’re very busy right now.”

There was no way to confirm Pushtoon’s account. If true, however, it would mean that Shirzai’s forces had moved nearly two miles closer to the airport and the city during the past 24 hours. A large contingent of foreign Taliban fighters is believed to be dug into positions near the airport, according to sources familiar with the area.

Karzai’s forces were advancing southeast toward Kandahar. But rather than attacking, they were engaged in careful negotiations to win support from local tribal commanders peacefully and reach out to Taliban leaders in Kandahar.

In an interview with the British Broadcasting Corp.’s Pashto-language service aired Saturday night, Karzai said he had met some “elders from the city and a few commanders near the city.”

“I assured them that if the Taliban put down their arms they would have an amnesty and come to no harm,” he said. “We’re going toward Kandahar. We’re going forward trying to solve the problems through negotiations.”

The continuing effort to negotiate a peaceful settlement is the result in part of the shared ethnic background of the Taliban and anti-Taliban forces in southern Afghanistan. Both are drawn from the Pushtun ethnic group, and most anti-Taliban forces have shown a deep reluctance to use military might to oust their Taliban brothers.

The Northern Alliance that has seized much of the rest of the country is widely distrusted and hated in the southern Pushtun heartland because the alliance is dominated by ethnic Tajiks, Uzbeks and other minorities.

Official Denies Alliance Is Fighting in Kandahar

On Saturday, alliance Foreign Minister Abdullah denied reports that alliance forces were fighting near Kandahar and said that some commanders with personal contacts in the region had gone only to offer assistance.

“We have sent people, and if assistance is needed, our people will coordinate those efforts in mobilizing more [of the] population against the Taliban,” Abdullah said.

The alliance isn’t pushing to get involved in the battle for Kandahar, Abdullah insisted. But after more than five weeks of “severe fighting around Kandahar with little progress, we think we all should join hands to get rid of this menace,” he added.

“But, of course, we are certainly aware of the sensitivities of the issue, and those commanders, or influential people, which we have sent are from the same area and they have significant influence over their people,” Abdullah said.

Abdullah is a Pushtun, and the Northern Alliance has Pushtun commanders who, if they operate discreetly, could expect a better reception among some of the Pushtun fighters outside Kandahar than a full-scale Northern Alliance ground offensive. Such an attack could easily set off a three-way war in the south among the Taliban, the Northern Alliance and Pushtuns who oppose the alliance and the Taliban.

Abdullah insisted that the Northern Alliance isn’t holding secret talks with Taliban leaders for the surrender of Kandahar.

“The time of negotiations has passed,” he said, adding, “Every effort should be made to eliminate the forces, which were the causes of misery in the Afghan nation.”

But in the south, quiet but serious negotiations were going on for the hand-over of Kandahar. The negotiations involve layers of difficult politics because the fundamentalist regime is divided between the hard-liners, primarily foreigners who support the movement’s leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, and Afghan Taliban who are ready to give up.

For the first time, a senior Taliban official, Abdul Salam Zaeef, the regime’s former ambassador to Pakistan, acknowledged that negotiations were underway with tribal elders for the surrender of its last major stronghold. He said contacts had been made with tribal elders “interested in working for the Afghan nation and Afghanistan.”

Zaeef, whose embassy was closed by the Pakistani government last month, also said that Omar is alive and issuing orders to his commanders. The orders, Zaeef said, were being carried out.

Bombing Puts Pressure on Taliban, Civilians

There were signs Saturday that it may be the U.S.-led bombing that ultimately drives the Taliban to surrender. During the last 24 hours, the bombing raids around Kandahar and as far south as the border town of Spin Buldak have caused residents to flee, according to international aid groups.

Kris Janowski, a spokesman for the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said that usually about 400 refugees arrive at the border each day hoping to cross, but that on Saturday the numbers swelled to 1,200.

A trader arriving at the Pakistani border post of Chaman late Saturday said that while passing the Kandahar airport earlier in the day, he saw bombs dropping followed by dust and smoke rising from the ground.

The trader, who gave only one name, Abdullah, said he counted between 10 and 15 aircraft in the attack.

Pushtun chief Karzai’s brother, Ahmed, said commanders in the field were struck by the ferocity of the bombing.

“Last night [Friday], the plane was bombarding some areas in the airport and one of our commanders, a moujahedeen who fought the Soviets, told me he never remembered such heavy bombing before,” Ahmed Karzai said.

But there were signs that some of the U.S. bombs may be missing their targets. As the United States redoubled its assault on Tora Bora in the northeast, witnesses reported that many bombs hit villages in the region instead.

Late Saturday, the commander of the military in Jalalabad, the nearest major city, said that at least 20 people were killed in a dawn bombing in Kama Ado.

Witnesses who made the trek to the hospital in Jalalabad said as many as 200 villagers died. Meanwhile, the provincial security chief said 50 people were killed in a nighttime strike on the village of Khan-i-Muirajuddin.

An elder from the village of Zamer Khel also reported that scores of his people were killed when warplanes bombed the nearby house of a low-ranking Taliban official. And five people were reported dead in bombing attacks on Agam.

The deaths were impossible to confirm.

The cave system has been a prime target for the U.S. military because it is believed that either Bin Laden or high-ranking Al Qaeda members are hiding there. Built by rebel Afghan soldiers during the war against the former Soviet Union, the honeycomb of tunnels and chambers has historically stood immune to attack.

The Northern Alliance’s Abdullah said Saturday that he doesn’t believe Bin Laden is hiding in Tora Bora.

“I think some of his lieutenants are in Tora Bora, and some of his followers, but not he himself,” Abdullah told reporters in Kabul, the Afghan capital, without saying where his information came from.

For weeks now, Abdullah has suggested that Bin Laden was in or near Kandahar and heading for the high mountains of southern Afghanistan, likely in the Zabol, Oruzgan or Helmand provinces that border Kandahar province.

“They are making preparations for guerrilla warfare,” Abdullah said. “This is our our reading of the situation with the Taliban as well as Osama’s people.”

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Rubin reported from Chaman, Marshall from Quetta and Stack from Jalalabad. Times staff writers Paul Watson in Kabul and Edmund Sanders in Washington contributed to this report.