Taliban battling to keep control of city

Taliban forces battled advancing opposition fighters outside the key city of Mazar-e-Sharif today, fighting to keep control of the northern base.

Meanwhile, US jets kept up heavy, round-the-clock pummelling of military sites at Afghanistan’s capital Kabul.

In Washington, the Pentagon acknowledged that US bombs had struck two International Red Cross warehouses on Kabul’s edge, saying it had suspected the Taliban were using depots in that area to store military supplies.

The contest for Mazar-e-Sharif was playing out 20 miles outside the northern city, with Taliban soldiers struggling to block fighters of Afghanistan’s northern-based opposition, said Abdul Hanan Himat, a Taliban information ministry official.

‘‘Our fighters are fully capable of holding them off,’’ Himat said.

The opposition fighters had moved as close as four miles from Mazar-e-Sharif’s airport, said Ashraf Nadim, a spokesman with the opposition forces.

Mazar-e-Sharif is the major city of Afghanistan’s north. Control of the city and its supply routes would allow the opposition to strengthen and consolidate its position in the north.

The city had been the opposition’s base until the Taliban militia routed them in 1998, two years after seizing the capital and imposing their strict version of Islamic rule upon Afghanistan.

The fractious anti-Taliban alliance, made up of mainly of ethnic minority Tajiks and Uzbeks, now holds only 5% to 10% of Afghanistan.

In Washington, a senior Pentagon official said the Taliban was in danger of losing Mazar-e-Sharif within days, thanks in part to US and British bombing clearing the way for the opposition advance.

The stronghold’s fall would be a ‘‘significant setback,’’ the official, Lt. Gen. Gregory Newbold, US Joint Chiefs of Staff operations director, said.

Himet, the Taliban Information Ministry official, claimed in Kabul that a key commander had returned to the Taliban after briefly defecting.

The commander, Qazi Abdul Hai, was with Taliban forces at Mazar-e-Sharif with 4,000 of his men, Himet said.

Opposition forces are trying to move forward under cover of the US-led bombing campaign, launched on October 7 after Taliban rulers repeatedly refused to hand over Osama bin Laden chief suspect in the September 11 terror attacks in the United States.

The air offensive has unleashed more than 2,000 bombs and missiles in Afghanistan, Newbold said. He called the bombardments of recent days especially intense.

Today’s airstrikes opened with new raids reported at the Taliban’s headquarters city of Kandahar and with US jets streaking over Kabul followed rapidly by five explosions on the northern outskirts.

Taliban military bases, fuel and transport depots, and the civilian and military airport are all on the city’s northern edge.

Another three bombs fell in the southwest of the capital, blowing windows and doors out of many homes and small shops in the area. A doctor said his clinic was partially destroyed.

Taliban anti-aircraft gunners usually respond to the bombing raids with heavy fire, although the US and British jets fly high out of range. Today they were silent for reasons that were unclear.

On Tuesday, the Pentagon confirmed that a US Navy jet had dropped half-ton bombs on warehouses used by the International Red Cross.

A Pentagon statement said US pilots had targeted a series of warehouses suspected to be used by the Taliban to store equipment and military vehicles.

‘‘US forces did not know that ICRC was using one or more of the warehouses,’’ the statement said.

Red Cross officials said roofs of the warehouses had been clearly marked with the aid group’s insignia.

One security guard was slightly injured in the bombing, which sent Afghan staff running to try to salvage tents, blankets and grain from the smoke and flames.

Aid officials in Islamabad reported looting at relief operations in Afghanistan, including cars and computers stolen from offices in Kandahar and Mazar-e-Sharif.

‘‘The law and order situation in Kandahar appears to be breaking down,’’ UN spokesman Stephanie Bunker said.