Taliban say attack shows they can strike at will
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-09-10 16:11

A rocket attack aimed at Kabul's international airport showed the Taliban have the ability to target anywhere in Afghanistan, the group said on Friday, warning that the country would become "a burial ground" for Americans.

A Pakistani paramilitary soldier keeps vigil at a post near Pakistan's Wana tribal district near the Afghan border. Pakistani intelligence officials say Al-Qaeda's top leaders, including possibly Osama bin Laden, pull the strings of global terror through an intricate and watertight network from their hide outs in the mountainous frontier between Pakistan and Afghanistan. [AFP]

Despite the four rockets falling well short or wide of their target, Mullah Dadullah Akhund -- the Taliban's military commander and a member of its 10-member ruling council -- said U.S.-led forces in the country were pinned down in their bases.

He was speaking a day after the Arabic satellite TV channel al Jazeera broadcast a video of Osama bin Laden's Egyptian-born deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, claiming that mujahideen fighters had U.S. forces pinned down in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"The enemy are limited to their capitals," al-Zawahri said in the tape broadcast two days before the third anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. Washington quickly blamed al Qaeda and sent troops to Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban.

"The Americans are hiding in their trenches and refuse to come out to face the mujahideen, as the mujahideen shell and fire on them, and cut roads off around them. Their defense is only to bomb by air, wasting U.S. money as they kick up dust."

Mullah Dadullah told Reuters by satellite phone early on Friday that four rockets which struck a crowded residential area in the Afghan capital late on Thursday night had been aimed at the nearby airport, where U.S. forces and the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force have a strong presence.

Two adults and a child were slightly injured in the attack, which Kabul's police chief said was an attempt to disrupt Afghanistan's first direct presidential elections on Oct. 9.

AMERICANS "SCARED AND AFRAID"

"Ayman al-Zawahri's statement is based on reality that allied forces in Afghanistan were confined to their military camps because they were scared and afraid and they do not have the courage to fight with the Taliban and other mujahideen," Dadullah said.

"Inshallah (God willing) we will make Afghanistan the burial ground for the Americans," he said.

U.S.-led forces overthrew the Taliban in late 2001 after it refused to give up bin Laden and other al Qaeda figures.

A U.S.-led force of about 18,000 troops is still hunting Taliban and al Qaeda guerrillas in Afghanistan but has yet to capture bin Laden or Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.

The U.S. military had no immediate comment on the Taliban remarks, but has dismissed such statements in the past.

In the al Jazeera broadcast, Zawahri said Iraq and Afghanistan were becoming quagmires for the United States.

"In both countries, if they continue they will bleed to death and if they withdraw they lose everything," said Zawahri.

U.S. combat casualties in Afghanistan in the past three years have been less than a tenth of the 1,000 troops they have lost in Iraq since last year.

Wearing a white turban with a machine gun at his side, Zawahri spoke to camera for several minutes in the tape.

"In Kabul, the Americans and peacekeeping forces are hiding from the shells of the Mujahideen and expect martyrdom (suicide) attacks at every moment," Zawahri said.

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