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U.S. Pins Bin Laden to Hideouts in East or South
Thursday, November 29, 2001
(2:10 AM ET)
By Sayed Salahuddin & Claudia Parsons
Reuters

An Afghan man walks by stacks of worthless Afghani notes in an underground strongroom of the country's national bank in Kabul November 29, 2001. Fleeing Taliban members plundered Afghanistan's national bank and made off with millions of dollars in cash two weeks ago during their hurried retreat from Kabul. The only cash left at the crumbling building consisted of aging bundles of worthless 100 and 500 Afghani notes, stacked in dusty piles on the ground.
Photo Credit: Reuters.

The Alliance's foreign minister said in Kabul that foreign peacekeepers could have a role in a post-Taliban Afghanistan, softening its previously-stated opposition to any such force. "Our preference would be an Afghan force, composed of all ethnic groups," Abdullah Abdullah told CNN.

KABUL/DESERT STRIP, Afghanistan -- Reuters
The Northern Alliance said Thursday Osama bin Laden was hiding in eastern or southern Afghanistan as U.S. forces sought to demoralize Taliban fighters defending their last bastion of Kandahar.

Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar is also alive after 54 days of U.S. strikes that have broken his movement's power and driven his bearded warriors into corners of the south and east, alliance spokesman Mohammad Habeel told Reuters.

"They are alive and still in Afghanistan," Habeel said.

He said the two men could be hiding either in the Safi Koh mountains near the eastern city of Jalalabad or jagged ranges around Kandahar, the last city still in Taliban hands.

U.S.-backed Alliance fighters have pinned the Taliban into a shrinking redoubt around their Kandahar headquarters, under threat from more than 800 U.S. Marines now deployed at a desert airstrip within striking distance of the ancient walled city.

In Washington, a Defense Department official said the thrust of the U.S. military campaign was now to sever the Taliban and al Qaeda chain of command to encourage their fighters to give up.
(More: iWon.com News Source)
2001 © Reuters, Ltd.

Dan