Taliban Struck Again

U.S. ships and warplanes mounted a second wave of bomb and missile attacks Monday, targeting Taliban troops, airstrips, command centers and Osama bin Laden’s terrorist training camps in Afghanistan.

The attack was launched from considerably fewer planes, ships and submarines than the previous day’s barrage. In contrast to Sunday, when British forces joined in the effort, only American forces took part.

U.S. commandos were operating on the ground, officials disclosed. Special operations forces have begun to “reach out” to Afghan groups opposing the Taliban and to disaffected members of the Taliban, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told reporters.

An opposition offensive could force the Taliban to mass its troops, making them vulnerable to further airstrikes. The American ground forces are expected to play a significant role in the effort to root out Bin Laden and his Al Qaeda terrorist network.

Monday’s bombing and missile barrage pounded the capital, Kabul, the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar in southern Afghanistan, and Taliban ground forces at Mazar-i-Sharif in the north. It marked the second round of attacks against the cities.

The Taliban said 20 civilians died in houses near the Kabul airport during Sunday’s assault. The report could not be confirmed. Pentagon officials said nothing about civilian casualties. Rumsfeld said only that early Taliban reports of U.S. casualties were “flat untrue.”

An eyewitness in Kabul said the airport there was bombed, along with a TV tower and the Hotel Continental north of the city. He recounted weapons fire and panic after Monday’s attack but said that only a trickle of refugees fled to territory held by the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance.

The alliance said that it infiltrated Kabul and other Afghan cities with spies and messengers to foment insurgency and that about 1,000 Taliban soldiers had switched sides, including 30 commanders.

In Washington, a spokesman for the alliance said a top Taliban commander, Akhtar Mohammed, was killed in Monday’s airstrike on Mazar-i-Sharif. The Taliban said only that it would defend Afghanistan and its Muslim religion with force.

In other developments:

* Thousands of Taliban supporters set fires and pelted police with rocks and bricks in the border city of Quetta in neighboring Pakistan. Paramilitary troops fired at the mobs with automatic weapons, killing at least one protester and injuring four others. The protesters burned three theaters, a police station, shops, banks and a U.N. compound and attempted to storm a hotel housing foreign journalists.

* In the Gaza Strip, police loyal to Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat opened fire on students protesting the airstrikes. Two Palestinians, ages 13 and 21, were killed, and a police commander said 45 were wounded. The Palestinian leadership distanced itself from Bin Laden, saying the Palestinian-Israeli conflict should not be used for extremist positions.

* The United States notified the U.N. Security Council that anti-terrorism strikes may extend beyond Afghanistan. U.S. officials did not elaborate. But White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said: “This is not just about one man. This is about an entire network that has people in places in some 60 countries.”

* Security was tightened across the U.S. The Coast Guard mobilized its largest harbor force since World War II. Legislators were advised not to wear identifying pins except on Capitol Hill. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas stood in for Vice President Dick Cheney to administer the oath to Tom Ridge as head of the new Office of Homeland Security so that Cheney could remain at an undisclosed location for security reasons.

* The FBI looked into a second case of anthrax exposure in Florida. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft said agents were unsure whether the infection was related to terrorism. Health officials found the bacterium in a co-worker of a man who died of anthrax last week. The bacterium was also detected in the building where both worked, and the facility was closed.

Bush Appeals for Patience and Resolve

President Bush took the occasion of Ridge’s swearing-in to renew his appeal for patience and resolve. “The best defense against terror is a global defense against terror, wherever it might be found,” he said. “This will be a long war. It requires understanding and patience from the American people.”

The administration gave a flurry of briefings on the fighting. Because of the remoteness of the battle zone, reporters could verify little of the information independently. Nor could thy verify claims by the Taliban.

At a Pentagon news conference, Rumsfeld said that 31 targets had been hit across Afghanistan during the first night of military operations and that key Taliban communications and energy facilities had been battered.

But he said Taliban air defenses were far from destroyed. And he cautioned that airstrikes alone were unlikely to “rock the Taliban back on their heels.”

Trying to lower expectations for a quick end to military action, Rumsfeld said the U.S.-led campaign is likely to stretch for “years, not weeks or months.”

Rumsfeld and Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, cautioned that cruise missiles in particular, and the bombing in general, were “not a silver bullet.”

“These raids are just one small part of the entire effort. The cruise missiles and bombers are not going to solve this problem,” Rumsfeld said.

Myers said Taliban early-warning radars, command and control facilities, airfields and aircraft on the ground, as well as ground forces and Al Qaeda facilities, had been struck in the two days of raids.

He said the Taliban fired surface-to-air missiles and hand-held rockets at U.S. warplanes. But aging aircraft at several Taliban air bases made no effort to scramble, and U.S. aircraft flew at altitudes beyond the reach of Taliban defenses, he said.

Rumsfeld said the American military had already begun psychological operations, including radio broadcasts, to undermine the Taliban’s grip on Afghanistan. The Pentagon plans to drop leaflets with a message to Afghans.

Monday’s airstrikes involved only five American bombers, including heavy B-1 bombers flying from the British-owned Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia and bat-winged B-2 stealth bombers flying from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, a Pentagon official said. Fifteen heavy bombers flew missions the previous day.

In addition, 10 F-14 and F/A-18 attack aircraft took part in Monday’s raids. They were launched from the aircraft carriers Carl Vinson and Enterprise in the Arabian Sea. Tomahawk missiles, 15 in all, were launched from the destroyers John Paul Jones and McFaul and from an American submarine, the official said.

On Sunday, four ships and two submarines--one American and one British--participated in the attack.

A Pentagon official said, “There should be nothing read into the decrease in numbers other than that the commander used the assets available to him to neutralize the targets at his disposal.

Rear Adm. Craig Quigley, a Pentagon spokesman, said that in contrast to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s 1999 war against Yugoslavia--when American bombers flew from the United States, dropped their payloads and then made the long return trip without a stop--the B-2 bombers did not return from Afghanistan straight to their hangars at home.

Instead, he said, they flew to Diego Garcia, where the pilots could rest before returning to their base halfway around the world.

For the second day, the airstrikes were accompanied by airdrops of humanitarian aid.

Soon after the bombing began about 9 p.m. in Afghanistan, two C-17 cargo planes loaded with 37,000 pounds of food and medical supplies left Ramstein Air Base in Germany for Afghanistan.

British Submarines in Arabian Sea

Although his nation’s forces took no active role in Monday’s strikes, British Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon said in London that two nuclear submarines, the Triumph and Trafalgar, were deployed in the Arabian Sea, both equipped with U.S.-made cruise missiles.

Hoon would not say which of the vessels had taken part in Sunday’s strikes. A third British submarine, the Superb, is in the area but is not equipped with cruise missiles.

Adm. Michael Boyce, Britain’s chief of defense staff, said 30 Tomahawk missiles were fired by the allies on the first night, of which three were aimed at targets close to Kabul, four at targets “close to other large settlements” and 23 at targets at remote locations.

“The target selection and processes were meticulous,” Boyce said. The strikes were designed “to damage, disrupt and destroy” the Al Qaeda network and the Taliban’s military infrastructure.

Asked if the strikes would achieve their goals before the onset of the bitter Afghan winter, Boyce said, “I do not necessarily agree the onset of winter will deny us the possibility of further [air] attacks,” although it would impede ground operations.

Walid Masoud, the Northern Alliance’s ambassador to London and brother of the assassinated alliance leader Ahmed Shah Masoud, told reporters that his group’s fighters were providing intelligence to help target Bin Laden’s network and Taliban installations.

In turn, he said, the United States and Britain were providing “aerial support” for alliance troops.

Masoud’s assertions were echoed by the alliance’s representative in Uzbekistan, a former Soviet republic that borders Afghanistan to the north and has allowed the United States to deploy elements of the Army’s 10th Mountain Division around a former Soviet airfield there.

Mohammed Hashad Saad, charge d’affaires at the embassy of the Afghan government in exile in Tashkent, the Uzbek capital, said: “We have very close military contact with the United States.”

Saad said the Northern Alliance would attack and attempt to retake Mazar-i-Sharif from the Taliban. Alliance forces in the area are ethnic Uzbeks under the command of Abdul Rashid Dostum, a former Communist general who has changed sides several times.

Another former Soviet republic, Tajikistan, said it would let the United States and its allies launch strikes from its territory.

Russian troops continue to provide security along Tajikistan’s border with Afghanistan.

France, meanwhile, said its intelligence agents already were inside Afghanistan and in contact with the Northern Alliance.

*

Schrader reported from Washington and Miller from London. Also contributing were Times staff writers Robyn Dixon in Denou, Afghanistan; Richard Paddock in Tashkent; Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson in Tehran; James Gerstenzang in Washington; and Richard E. Meyer and Tim Rutten in Los Angeles.