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Biggest Daylight Raids Pound Kabu
Monday, October 15, 2001
(10:43 AM ET)
The Associated Press

... the Taliban say up to 200 people were killed when U.S. jets devastated the hamlet last week ...

KABUL, Afghanistan -- AP
In the biggest daylight raids so far, U.S. jets pounded targets around Kabul on Monday and attacked a military headquarters and suspected terrorist training camp near the eastern city of Jalalabad. The stepped up attacks came one day after President Bush rebuffed the Taliban's latest offer to negotiate terrorism suspect Osama bin Laden's surrender.

In Pakistan, Muslim militants launched a nationwide strike to protest their government's support for the U.S.-led air campaign in Afghanistan. It was hard to gauge compliance across the vast country of 145 million Muslim people. Many shops in militant strongholds were closed -- nearly every store in the border city of Quetta. But thousands of merchants remained open, including in Karachi, Pakistan's largest city.

Secretary of State Colin Powell headed to the region to try to keep calm between Pakistan, a key ally in the campaign, and neighboring India -- heading off any surge in tensions that might complicate the U.S. military mission.

Daylight raids opened with jets streaking across the dawn sky over Kabul, striking in the area of the airport and a military base. Throughout the day, wave after wave of bombers, some to high to be heard in the streets below, pounded suspected military targets in the northwest of the capital.
(More: USA Today News Source)
2001 © The Associated Press.

Dan