U.S. Targets Taliban Hide-Outs With ‘Bunker Buster’ Bombs

U.S. warplanes pounded terrorist cave hide-outs with powerful, earth-penetrating bombs Thursday while also targeting Taliban troops, garrisons and military maintenance facilities in heavy airstrikes across Afghanistan.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said warplanes dropped precision-guided “bunker buster” bombs and other earth-penetrating munitions.

Marine Maj. Gen. Henry Osman, an official of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the bombs were aimed at caves, tunnels and other underground targets--the type of places where Osama bin Laden, the suspected architect of the attacks on the United States, and other leaders of his Al Qaeda terrorist network are believed to hide.

Osman said the airstrikes also are zeroing in on Taliban and Al Qaeda troop formations after several days in which the objective was to weaken air defenses.

“Taliban troops will certainly be” targeted, he said. “Up to now, the targets have been mostly air defense, command and control and so forth.”

Despite what the Pentagon has termed a successful campaign so far, senior defense officials cautioned that the fight in Afghanistan is likely to be a long one. One official said the military plans to settle in for months, if not years--patrolling the Afghan skies and hitting Taliban and Al Qaeda forces as they emerge from underground bunkers.

Osman said some of the current targets have been selected based on information provided by the anti-Taliban rebels of the Northern Alliance. But he said the insurgents aren’t choosing targets or providing air support for alliance forces.

“Coordination is probably too strong a word,” Osman said. “We are receiving communication from the Northern Alliance. We are not discussing targets with the Northern Alliance. . . . I’d have to believe that the targets we have hit have been of assistance to the Northern Alliance.”

With long-range B-1 and B-52 bombers and F-14 and F/A-18 fighter jets soaring over the mountains to strike Taliban positions near Kabul, the capital, Pentagon officials said the planes had hit seven targets Wednesday and six Tuesday, including a Taliban motor pool, a military radio station in Kabul, a surface-to-air missile installation and a military airfield.

The bombers flew from the British island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. The U.S. also fired cruise missiles at targets in Afghanistan, Osman said.

As the bombardment of the mountainous country already ravaged by years of war continued, Osman said the military was receiving indications that there have been defections from the ranks of the Taliban. He said the number is unclear.

Defense officials also said C-17 cargo planes flying from Ramstein Air Base in Germany continued to drop humanitarian rations into Afghanistan--34,440 packets Wednesday and 137,760 since the mission began Sunday.

Rumsfeld, in comments made after a memorial service at the Pentagon marking the one-month anniversary of the terrorist attacks there and at the World Trade Center, said the United States has been “targeting Al Qaeda and Taliban military capabilities . . . tanks or trucks or aircraft, training camps, terrorist training camps, concentrations of equipment of various types and also, needless to say, command and control.”

Asked if that included the top leaders of Al Qaeda and the Taliban, he said: “They represent a significant part of the command and control. So to the extent they’re in command and control facilities, indeed.”

Meanwhile, an Air Force sergeant on duty on the northern Arabian Peninsula became the first announced U.S. military fatality of the operation. The Air Force said Master Sgt. Evander Andrews, based at Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho, was killed early Wednesday in a heavy-equipment accident.

Another U.S. soldier was in critical condition in Incerlik, Turkey, where he was flown after being caught between two military vehicles while working in support of the operation, officials said. It was not disclosed where or how the accident happened.

The Afghan Islamic Press, a pro-Taliban news agency, claimed Thursday that U.S. raids had killed more than 140 people in the previous 24 hours, including dozens in a village near the eastern city of Jalalabad. In Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, Afghanistan’s ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef, said as many as 100 people had been killed.

But so far, the Taliban has not backed up its claims of casualties by allowing journalists access to victims or by broadcasting pictures of significant damage or carnage.

Rumsfeld said the U.S.-led force has taken steps--not always successful--to avoid civilian casualties.

“The United States of America does not target civilians,” he said. “On the other hand, we know who does target civilians, and it’s the terrorists that have killed thousands of Americans. And it comes with ill grace for the Taliban to be suggesting that we’re doing what they have made a practice and a livelihood out of.”

At the same time, he acknowledged that some civilian casualties are inevitable, noting that even sophisticated weaponry can go wrong.

“There’s no question but that when one is engaged militarily, that there is going to be unintended loss of life,” Rumsfeld said. “It has always been the case. It certainly will be the case in this instance. And there’s no question but that I and anyone involved regrets the unintended loss of life.”

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Times staff writer John Daniszewski in Quetta, Pakistan, contributed to this report.