US Bombs Kandahar, Afghans Near Deal

20/05/2001| IslamWeb

KABUL (Islamweb &News Agencies) - U.S. bombers and Pashtun tribesmen clawed at the Taliban's last bastion of Kandahar on Saturday as Afghan factions appeared close to a power-sharing deal in Bonn.
Tribal fighters captured part of Kandahar airport from the Taliban and their allies in Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda force after a day of fierce American air strikes, a spokesman said.
``Gul Agha and Gud Fida Mohammad's troops have entered the airport area and at this time fighting is continuing,'' Khalid Pashtoon, a spokesman for Gul Agha, told Reuters.
Tribesmen now controlled the side of the airport near a main road, while the Taliban held the other side edging the desert.
Gul Agha and Gud Fida Mohammad are Pashtun commanders trying to oust the Taliban from Kandahar, the fundamentalist militia's spiritual home and its last stronghold in Afghanistan.
Abdullah Abdullah, foreign minister of the victorious Northern Alliance, said he believed bin Laden was on the run in southern Afghanistan, not in caves near the eastern city of Jalalabad where U.S. forces have been focusing their search.
U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney said this week that bin Laden was probably in the cave-riddled Tora Bora area south of Jalalabad, where the Saudi-born militant is reputed to have built a fortified complex deep underground.
On the political front, Abdullah said Afghan factions at U.N.-sponsored talks in Bonn were ``very close to a deal.''
PHOTO CAPTION:
A column of US Marine Corps Light Armored Vehicles kicks up Afghan desert dust December 1, 2001 as it makes its way near the US Marine base in southern Afghanistan. U.S. bombers and Pashtun tribesmen clawed at the Taliban's last bastion of Kandahar as Afghan factions appeared close to a power-sharing deal. (Jim Hollander/Reuters)