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Al-Qaeda Under Heaviest Fire Yet
TORA BORA, Afghanistan, Dec 14 (News Agencies) - Al-Qaeda fighters loyal to Osama bin Laden came under the heaviest attacks yet from U.S. and Afghan forces in eastern Afghanistan as U.S. President George W. Bush denounced those who still reject bin Laden's responsibility for the September 11 terrorist attacks.
Pockets of al-Qaeda fighters driven back into the mountains around here faced heavy day and night bombing by U.S. warplanes and the biggest offensive to date from Afghan forces hunting for bin Laden.
One local Afghan commander predicted the total destruction of al-Qaeda forces by the weekend.
The whereabouts of the Saudi dissident remain uncertain, however, as Bush angrily castigated those who questioned the authenticity of a videotape of bin Laden broadcast Thursday.
"It is preposterous for anybody to think that this tape is doctored. That's just a feeble excuse to provide weak support for an incredibly evil man," said Bush of the video.
"This is bin Laden unedited," he said of the tape released by the Pentagon and seen throughout the world.
Bush, speaking at the White House, insisted that bin Laden would be captured, "dead or alive," as the Pentagon admitted it had no clear idea where he was, and reports emerged that he may have fled the caves and caverns of Tora Bora 10 days ago when the attacks to dislodge al-Qaeda from their final foothold in Afghanistan began.
"He may hid for a while, but we will get him," Bush said of bin Laden, wanted for the terrorist onslaught on the United States that left more than 3,000 dead and triggered the U.S.-led campaign to topple Afghanistan's Taliban regime who refused to hand him over.
As the fighting intensified in the east, in southern Afghanistan, 200 U.S. Marines, joined by Australian troops, swept into Kandahar airport by land and by air and cleared the facility of mines and booby traps, but said unspecified "threats" delayed its opening to flights.
U.S. warplanes bombed ridges of the White Mountains around Tora Bora throughout the day and night and were joined in the heat of the battle by the withering fire of at least one AC-130 gunship.
About 100 al-Qaeda forces, warplanes pounding their positions, were surrounded on a ridge close to a network of caves and tunnels under Tora Bora mountain, militia commander Hazrat Ali said.
"The al-Qaeda people on Tora Bora are finished," he said. "I hope that we will finish them off tonight - if not, by midday tomorrow they will be 100 percent beaten."
He said he was unsure of where bin Laden was as the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press (AIP), close to the now-defunct Taliban regime, said the al-Qaeda chief left Tora Bora 10 days ago.
According to AIP, bin Laden moved to Tora Bora from Kabul on November 12 and left for an "unnamed place" some two weeks later. The report could not be confirmed.
In southern Afghanistan, U.S. marines launched a land- and helicopter-borne force on Kandahar airport from their Camp Rhino base south of the city and from the carrier USS Bataan in the Arabian Sea, their most ambitious operation since they landed in Afghanistan on November 25.
The marines, accompanied by Australian SAS commandos, gathered at staging areas to the north before moving to the airport in a 40-vehicle convoy through the streets of Kandahar, guided by U.S. special forces, an officer said.
The marines said C-130 transports could ferry supplies as early as Friday evening, but later said they suspended all flights because of an unspecified "anti-air threat" spotted by intelligence services.
Meanwhile, European Union heads of state and government meeting in Belgium were mulling contributions from their 15 nations to a U.N.-mandated multinational security force that could deploy in Afghanistan within days, Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt said.
In London, military officials from 16 countries willing to commit soldiers to the force to be deployed in Kabul gathered to thrash out details.
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