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Marines Search for Taliban Leaders
Wednesday, December 5, 2001
(4:15 PM ET)
By Kathy Gannon
Associated Press Writer

The only picture of Mullah Omar when Taliban captured Kandhar in 1996. The picture captured from Video tape.
Photo Credit: Afghan-Info.com.

Hamid Karzai, the leader of the U.N.-backed interim council that will run the country for six months, and who takes office Dec. 22, said he was asking village elders to tell their people to help find bin Laden and Omar. He pledged to deliver the two leaders to international justice.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- AP
Armed with photographs of wanted terrorists, U.S. Marines scoured the roads of southern Afghanistan today for Taliban and al-Qaida leaders who might have slipped out of Kandahar as the former ruling militia abandoned its last stronghold.

Kandahar was reported to be tense, with the rival armed groups that replaced the Taliban jockeying for control of key parts of the city and occasionally exchanging gunfire. Talks were reportedly under way to set up a civil administration and avoid an explosion of factional fighting.

Tribal officials, speaking by telephone from Pakistan, said more than 200 Arabs loyal to Osama bin Laden were still holding out at the Kandahar airport and refusing to surrender.

Afghanistan's new interim leader called on the Afghan public to join the hunt for bin Laden and supreme Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, whose whereabouts were unknown. And Pakistan sent more troops and helicopters to its border with Afghanistan to prevent Taliban or al-Qaida fighters from entering that country.

``We will make sure we will get rid of terrorism. We want to finish terrorism in Afghanistan and in the world,'' said Hamid Karzai, the leader of the U.N.-backed interim council that will run the country for six months.
(More: OrlandoSentinel.com News Source)
2001 © The Associated Press.

Dan