The anti-Taliban Northern Alliance have welcomed the US-led military strikes and said missiles had hit other cities apart from Kabul and Kandahar.
A Northern Alliance spokesman, Abdullah Abdullah, added that he believed the Taliban would only retain their rule in the capital Kabul for a few more days.
"The Taliban will not be able to resist on the frontlines north of Kabul for more than a few days," the spokesman said in an interview with CNN from his forces' frontline positions north of the capital.
A member of the Afghan opposition, and former spokesman for General Massoud, called on the US to use "surgical" military strikes that would not harm the Afghan people.
"We hope the military strikes will be carefully aimed, what we call surgical and not blind," Ashat Froz, now living in Rennes in France, told AFP, adding he feared Afghan citizens would be the first to suffer.
"We have never been in favor of American military strikes, but we knew they could not be avoided. We were hoping that the counterattack would be made in consultation with the Afghan resistance," Froz added.
Earlier today the Northern Alliance suspended helicopter flights to its Panjsher valley stronghold north of Kabul for at least two days. They refused to give a reason for the suspension.
Meanwhile the Taliban said they were deploying an extra 8,000 fighters along the border with the former Soviet republic of Uzbekistan.
|
|
Northern Alliance soldiers watching news of the bombings on television this evening
|
Quoting unnamed Taliban defence ministry sources, the Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) said although there were already several thousand fighters along the border, reinforcements were needed after reports the United States was deploying its troops in Uzbekistan.
"We have deployed our forces there at all important places. This is the question of our self respect and we will never bow before the Americans and will fight to the last," AIP quoted a Taliban spokesman as saying.
One thousand US soldiers have been sent to Uzbekistan in an unprecedented deployment of American forces in the former Soviet republic.
In Iran a spokesman of the main Afghan Shiite party said today the Afgan people "will rise up" and the opposition forces of the Northern Alliance "will drive out the Taliban" once the United States attacks.
"As soon as the missiles and bombing raids hit military targets, the people will rise up and the fighters of the (opposition coalition) Northern Alliance will drive out the Taliban," Mr Qolamhussein Nasseri, foreign spokesman of the Shiite Hezb-i-Wahdat, which is part of the alliance, said.
"Our troops are on maximum alert. We will help the Americans, so long as they attack military targets. But we are very worried about possible civilian casualties. We have made that clear to the Americans," Mr Nasseri added.
He also predicted a US attack "will be launched within two days."
According to the Shiite official, there are eight key "targets" in Washington's campaign against Osama bin Laden.
They are Kandahar in the south-east of the country - "the big one" - where bin Laden and Taliban leader MR Mullah Mohammad Omar have their bases, east Kabul, the military bases in the provinces of Lowgar to the south of Kabul, and Jalalabad to the east, the airbase of Sindand and the garrisons of Herat and Ghowr province in the west, and finally those of Mazar-i-Sharif to the north.
AFP and