Alliance captures district outside Taliban-held city

Opposition forces today claimed the capture of a district outside the strategic northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif, while US warplanes resumed their bombing raids on Taliban frontline positions.

The opposition Northern Alliance late last night seized the Zaray district, 60 miles to the south of the city, said opposition spokesman Ashraf Nadeem.

Five people died in the fighting, according to the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press.

Nadeem also said that opposition troops led by warlord Rashid Dostum overran a village southeast of Mazar-e-Sharif. Fifteen Taliban soldiers were captured and both sides suffered casualties, though no figures were available, Nadeem said.

There was also fierce fighting and bombing around Ogopruk, a contested district near Zaray. The Taliban have reinforced their front lines with 400 fresh troops, Nadeem said.

Despite the latest successes claimed by the opposition, they have not been able to make major advances toward Mazar-e-Sharif, and remain well south of the city with winter closing in.

American military planners want the Afghan opposition, a loose coalition of fighters with ethnic and religious differences, to make significant gains ahead of winter. Fighting traditionally tapers off then because snow closes roads and hampers the resupply of troops.

US jets have been pounding Taliban positions defending Mazar-e-Sharif throughout the air campaign, now in its fifth week, but have not been able to dislodge Taliban defenders.

Mazar-e-Sharif is an important northern crossroads that the rebels lost to the Taliban in 1998. Retaking it would open a major supply route for the northern alliance to Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.

Also, US jets bombarded the Taliban at another front line north of the capital, Kabul, in an effort to soften up defences ahead of a planned advance by the northern alliance.

US jets killed four people and wounded six in Kargah, 12 miles west of Kabul, according to the Taliban-run Bakhtar News Agency. The report could not be independently confirmed.

Meanwhile, a small group of American military personnel is in Tajikistan assessing the possibility of using at least three bases there to expand the US bombing campaign and strengthen support for Afghan opposition forces.

US officials have confirmed sending more special troops into Afghanistan to help coordinate air strikes and provide other assistance to the opposition.

As part of that effort, a team of five US military personnel landed at a new airstrip in Golbahar, not far from the front line, "to help coordinate efforts in the war", said opposition interior minister Yunis Qanoni.

He said the men arrived on Sunday from Tajikistan’s capital Dushanbe in a small twin-engine plane. They were expected to study the new dirt landing strip to see if it is ready to handle supplies.

The supply route for the Northern Alliance, which snakes through the formidable mountains from Tajikistan in the north has already been snowed over.

In Kabul yesterday, Taliban chief spokesman Amir Khan Muttaqi said the Islamic militia was "preparing for a long war" and challenged the United States to send ground troops to Afghanistan "to fight us face to face".

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who wrapped up a tour of central and south Asia yesterday, said the military operation in Afghanistan was becoming more effective and would not take years to complete.

With more US military teams on the ground in Afghanistan to direct aircraft, "the effectiveness of bombing is improving every day", he said.