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Taliban Fights to Hold Key Afghan City; U.S. Keeps Bombing Kabul
Tuesday, October 16, 2001
(3:42 AM ET)
Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

“The law and order situation in Kandahar appears to be breaking down.”

KABUL, Afghanistan
Taliban forces battled advancing opposition fighters outside Mazar-e-Sharif Wednesday, fighting to keep the key northern city while U.S. jets kept up heavy, round-the-clock pummeling of the capital's military sites.

In Washington, the Pentagon acknowledged that U.S. bombs had struck two International Red Cross warehouses on Kabul's edge, saying it had suspected the Taliban were using depots in that area to store military supplies.

The contest for Mazar-e-Sharif was playing out about 19 miles outside the city, with Taliban soldiers trying to block fighters of Afghanistan's northern-based opposition, said Abdul Hanan Himat, a Taliban information-ministry official. "Our fighters are fully capable of holding them off," Mr. Himat said.

The opposition fighters had moved as close as four miles from Mazar-e-Sharif's airport, said Ashraf Nadim, a spokesman for opposition forces.
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Dan