Kabul, Afghanistan — After days of intensive air strikes, the U.S. military stopped bombing a mountain honeycombed with suspected terrorist hideouts Tuesday, enabling civilians living nearby who had fled the onslaught to return to their homes, many smashed into rubble.
Pakistani troops searched vehicles on their side of the border across from the destroyed terrorist camp at Zawar, seeking Arabs and other foreigners who could be members of Osama bin Laden's terror network trying to escape. None were immediately discovered.
In Washington, U.S. officials said the military was seeking new targets in its hunt for die-hard supporters of bin Laden and his Taliban allies now that the camp had been eradicated, with 50 caves sealed and every building flattened.
But in Saidgi, the Pakistani town across the border, Afghan refugees who had fled the bombings said that many of the structures bombed to rubble were their homes. Abdullah Gorbaz, 52,, said that at least 12 civilians were killed and cattle herds were decimated.
"There is no more bombing, so we are going back to our homes," said Allam Gul, 45, one of the refugees.
With a major aid conference scheduled next week in Tokyo, the United Nations is urging countries that have pledged aid to come through now, saying that paying civil servants is crucial to the post-Taliban administration's well-being.
"Unfortunately, the promises that were made haven't been taken seriously," Muhammad Amin Farhang, Afghanistan's reconstruction minister, told the German television network ARD. "Over the last few days, we have spoken very intensively with international institutions about the priorities."
Donor nations have agreed to contribute dlrs 20 million so far, but as of Dec. 31 only dlrs 2 million had been handed over, U.N. officials have said. Some 210,000 civil servants and 25,000 police officers have not been paid in months.
In the southern city of Kandahar, where U.S.-led coalition forces have established their largest base, an active threat remained from armed holdouts. Front-line troops believed that their opponents were planning an attack.
U.S. Marine Capt. Dan Greenwood said that patrols spotted seven men who appeared to be armed with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers heading toward an abandoned mud house outside the base perimeter around sunset Monday.
The same area was used by gunmen Thursday to launch an attack while a C-17 transport plane took off with the first batch of 20 prisoners from bin Laden's al-Qaida network and the ousted Taliban regime, heading from a detention center in Kandahar to a high-security jail at the U.S. Navy Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The Marines sent out a light-armored vehicle to investigate, Greenwood said. The men were not found, but rockets, mortars and mortar fuses were. The area had previously been searched, so the weapons were believed to have been moved in recently. Demolitions experts blew up the house and a web of tunnels that was discovered.
"They were coming in to use them for an attack of some sort," said First Lt. James Jarvis, the Marines spokesman. "They were hoping not to be detected, but they were detected."
Marines dug in on the perimeter said the situation was similar to just before last week's attack, when they saw groups of men walking by the fence line look in and apparently count. The Marines are certain that their opponents know that rules of engagement prevent them from firing unless under direct threat.
"I don't underestimate them," said Sgt. Ethan Ramsey, 22, of West Plains, Missouri. "I think they might underestimate us a lot. I want them to come back. They're taunting us now."
In Spinboldak, south of Kandahar near the Pakistan border, provincial authorities replaced tribal leader Mullah Akhter Jan on Monday, accusing him of spreading lawlessness and corruption.
With a voluntary disarmament program in Spinboldak moving slowly, forces loyal to Kandahar Gov. Gul Agha, in the presence of U.S. Special Forces soldiers, also seized about 100 trucks of arms and ammunition and went house to house seizing more weapons, said Yusef Pashtun, a spokesman for the governor.
U.N. aid officials implored Pakistan on Monday to let more than 13,000 Afghan refugees into a border camp so they can receive aid and protection. They have massed in the past few days on a wind-swept plain near Kili Faiso camp, just across the border into Pakistan, and many are sleeping in the open in bitter cold.
Pakistan, which has officially closed its border with Afghanistan, has long said it has all the refugees it can handle. It has registered 1.2 million, but the real figure is believed to be far higher. Tens of thousands of Afghans have sneaked in using mountain tracks in recent months.
Elsewhere, some remote mountain villages south of the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif have been snowed in and are unreachable even by donkey, Dey said. The hardest-hit towns include Armakh, Baluj and Abdullah Gan, where people are trying to survive on grass.
The World Food Program plans to venture farther into mountainous areas to find pockets of needy Afghans and has rented every donkey available to carry food, Dey said.
Thirty al-Qaida prisoners arrived Monday in Guantanamo. At least three of the prisoners there are British nationals, according to the British Foreign Office.
Clarke said that the 20 al-Qaida prisoners who arrived at Guantanamo last week are receiving three "culturally appropriate" meals a day and have a daily opportunity to exercise.
No comments
Commenting is turned off for this story.