Are we bombing Afganistan? CNN showing video

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shows explosions in kabul. Is that US?

-- Anonymous, September 11, 2001

Answers

Response to Are we bombinh Afganistan? CNN showing video

sources say we are 90% sure it was that ben asshole who arranged this attack on the US, and now people are speculating that we are bombing Kabul.

-- Anonymous, September 11, 2001

Response to Are we bombinh Afganistan? CNN showing video

That's sure what the news account is making it look like.

-- Anonymous, September 11, 2001

Response to Are we bombinh Afganistan? CNN showing video

according to Dan Blather -- a high ranking Govt official this is NOT the US but maybe Afghan rebels.

-- Anonymous, September 11, 2001

Response to Are we bombinh Afganistan? CNN showing video

The Taliban has been mounting a serious offensive against the rebels and seriously wounded their leader yesterday--maybe this is more of same.

-- Anonymous, September 11, 2001

Response to Are we bombinh Afganistan? CNN showing video

My first reaction was that it was us, or connected to us in some way. A quick reaction attempt to nail that guy. But blame it on some rebels if they have to. Frankly, we have been doing so much pussy- footing about terrorists the last few years, maybe our guys (and that includes Dubya) aren't keen about making an attack known.

Or at least until the US public now gets behind some tough response, which I think is going to be the result in the days ahead. As we start to total up the lives, the costs, the disruptions to business, finance, the market, the economy, I think there will be a general clamor to *do something* serious now. Anyway, I sort of hope we were trying to get the folks who were/are known to be behind today's attacks. Personally, I think people in deep intelligence do know.

-- Anonymous, September 11, 2001



Wednesday September 12, 06:56 AM

Anti-Taliban opposition attack Kabul airport

KABUL (Reuters) - Afghanistan's anti-Taliban opposition says it has carried out an air and rocket assault on Kabul airport, a raid initially thought to be U.S. retaliation for terror attacks in the United States.

The Pentagon said the United States was not involved and Bismillah Khan, a top commander of the anti-Taliban forces, said the opposition alliance had used helicopter gunships in the attack.

There was no immediate comment in Kabul from Afghanistan's ruling Taliban, who are sheltering Saudi militant Osama bin Laden, a suspect in Tuesday's attacks on targets in New York and Washington.

Kabul residents were woken up on Wednesday by massive explosions from the combined military-civil airport northeast of the city, fearing that the United States had launched a retaliatory strike.

"Two of our helicopter gunships took part in this operation," Khan told Reuters by satellite telephone, adding that the opposition alliance was retaliating against Taliban jet attacks on its forces.

Plumes of smoke rose from the airport but Taliban fighters sealed off the area and refused to give information about the extent of damage or casualties.

But their jet fighters, ageing planes left behind by the retreating Soviet forces, occasionally roared off from the airport, indicating that the tarmac was still useable.

Khan said that opposition forces also fired medium-range Russian-built missiles at the airport. Explosions, punctuated by Taliban anti-aircraft fire, lasted for almost 10 minutes.

"We had to do something to stop their attacks and that was the only way," Khan said from a location north of Kabul, where the opposition forces have been dug in since being driven from Kabul in 1996.

The assault followed an intensification of Taliban attacks after reports the top opposition military commander Ahmad Shah Masood had been assassinated by a suicide bomber. The opposition say Masood survived with serious injuries.

The Afghan Islamic Press (AIP), quoting its own sources, said the Northern Alliance opposition forces had destroyed two planes at Kabul airport and hit an ammunition dump nearby.

There was no word on any casualties from the attack, which occurred as Kabul was under its daily night-time curfew.

Dramatic live television pictures on CNN showed explosions lighting up the night sky and tracer rounds being fired from the ground.

"In no way is the United States government connected with those explosions," U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told reporters in Washington.

The Taliban's ambassador to Pakistan said there had been an explosion near Kabul airport.

"There has been some sort of explosion near the airport but I do not know how much damage there has been," Abdul Salam Zaeef told Reuters in Islamabad after contacting Kabul.

Residents in Kabul, which is largely in ruins after years of conflict, said they heard loud explosions as at least one helicopter flew in.

"I heard some helicopters come and fired rockets and the Taliban fired back and the helicopters went away and now the situation is calm," said one resident.

The Taliban have denied involvement in the attack on Masood, which members of the alliance said was carried out by two Arabs posing as journalists.

No group has claimed responsibility for Tuesday's attacks in the United States, in which two passenger jets ploughed into New York's World Trade Centre and another crashed into the Pentagon.

The hardline Islamist Taliban moved to swiftly condemn the attacks in the United States and said bin Laden was incapable of mounting such a complex operation from poverty-stricken Afghanistan.

Bin Laden was accused of simultaneous attacks on two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998 -- a sophisticated operation that analysts compared to Tuesday's attack on New York and Washington.

The United States retaliated for those bombings with cruise missile attacks on camps run by bin Laden. He was unhurt but Washington has named him as a suspect in attacks since then.

-- Anonymous, September 12, 2001


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