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Anti-Taliban Forces Start Major Attack
Saturday, November 10, 2001
Reuters

JABAL-US-SARAJ, Afghanistan
US warplanes pounded Taliban front lines in Afghanistan with renewed ferocity Friday as anti-Taliban forces announced the start of a major attack on the strategic northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif.

With the US-led war on Afghanistan in its 34th day, witnesses said police in neighboring Pakistan shot dead three pro-Taliban protesters denouncing government support for the war and backing a general strike called by Islamic parties.

In the United States itself, US President George W. Bush gave the jittery nation a pep talk, telling Americans to get on with their lives despite a deadly anthrax germ warfare attack and urging them to use their "eyes and ears" to thwart global terror.

Ashraf Nadeem, spokesman for the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, said US planes bombed Taliban front lines on Friday.

"It has had a very good impact in breaking the front lines of Taliban," he told Reuters by satellite telephone from near the front in northern Afghanistan.

"Our troops are now advancing toward Mazar-i-Sharif."
(More: Manila Bulletin News Source)
2001 © Reuters.

Dan