4 scribes feared killed, Taliban holdouts pounded

LONDON, NOV. 19. Four foreign journalists are believed to have been killed by unidentified attackers in Afghanistan, the ITN Television and Radio Company reported here today quoting its reporter who was present at the site. The ITN correspondent was in one of the cars in the convoy which was attacked. He said that the reporters were held up by armed men, believed to be bandits, when they were on their way to Kabul from Jalalabad.

They were taken into the mountains and later shots were heard, the reporter said, according to Ria Novosti. Other cars turned back towards Jalalabad on seeing the attackers.

The driver fled and on arrival in Kabul, reported the incident. It is being investigated by the Northern Alliance. According to a Reuters report, the journalists included two from Reuters - Harry Burton, an Australian television cameraman, and Azizullah Haidari, an Afghan-born photographer. A Spanish journalist, Julio Fuentes of El Mundo, and an Italian journalist, Maria Grazia Cutuli of Corriere Della Sera, were the others suspected to be killed.

An AP report from Jalalabad said that the journalists were travelling in a province that recently came under the control of anti-Taliban forces. However, some Taliban stragglers and Arab fighters loyal to the Saudi dissident, Osama bin Laden, are still believed to be in the area.

More U.S. bombing

Amid an intensive diplomatic push for setting up a new Afghan Government, U.S. warplanes took to the skies on Monday for strikes at Taliban holdouts in Afghanistan's north, east and south, a Kabul report said.

Opposition fighters fired on Taliban positions outside the city of Kunduz, the militia's only remaining redoubt in the north of Afghanistan while U.S. planes pounded the front lines. Foreign fighters loyal to Osama are said to be preventing Taliban defenders from giving up the fight in Kunduz.

Sunday brought substantial progress toward arranging a U.N.- brokered conference on forming a power-sharing Government.

The head of the Northern Alliance, Mr. Burhanuddin Rabbani, wanted the meeting to take place in Kabul. But following talks in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, with the U.S. envoy, Mr. James F. Dobbins, the Alliance's Foreign Minister, Mr. Abdullah Abdullah, said the meeting ``will be held outside Afghanistan,'' possibly as early as this week.

He said some locations proposed by the U.N. ``were acceptable to us,'' citing Germany, Switzerland and Austria.

The U.S. had been putting heavy pressure on the Alliance to drop its insistence on Kabul as a venue for the talks.

The Pak.-based Afghan Islamic Press said U.S. planes bombarded targets in the eastern Nangarhar province and at the southern city of Kandahar, the Taliban's home base.

In Kandahar, the Taliban appeared still in control despite a reported deal last week for their supreme leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, to leave the city. However, the situation was said to be tense, and sources in the city said the Taliban had extended the night curfew.

Afghan sources in Pakistan said a delegation of tribal leaders was in Kandahar trying to negotiate a transfer of power.

- UNI, AP

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