U.S. Marines go into action near Kandahar

KABUL, NOV. 27. U.S. Marines went into action near the Taliban's southern stronghold of Kandahar, the last major city remaining under its control. Streets in Kandahar were largely deserted, except for pickup trucks of Taliban soldiers armed with rocket launchers and Kalashnikovs, residents reached by telephone said.

After negotiations with Pashtun tribal leaders on the fate of Taliban-held Spinboldak, a key town on the main road from Kandahar to the Pakistani border, tribesmen looted blankets and food from humanitarian aid warehouses and drove the Taliban from power, the Afghan Islamic Press said.

``It seems that Taliban has ceased'' to control the area, the Pakistan-based news agency said, citing witnesses.

The report could not be independently verified.

The militia has vowed to fight to the death in Kandahar. A spokesman, Mullah Abdullah, told the Pakistan-based news agency that the Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, was still in the town and in command of his troops.

Just to the west, U.S. helicopters and KC-130s on Tuesday landed on the hardpacked sand of a new Marines' base, which includes a compound of buildings, a small mosque - and now, the American flag at its centre.

The troops set up base on Monday, seizing the airstrip near Kandahar with no resistance, and quickly sent helicopter gunships aloft to follow up an air strike by Navy F-14 Tomcat jets on an armoured convoy of 15 vehicles.

Anti-Taliban forces in the north said they had quelled the uprising at a mud-walled fortress near Mazar-e-Sharif, where hundreds of pro-Taliban foreigners who surrendered from the besieged town of Kunduz had turned on their guards in three days of fierce fighting backed by U.S. airstrikes and special forces.

In the northern town of Taloqan, from which many journalists had been covering the siege in nearby Kunduz, a Swedish television journalist was killed in an overnight robbery.

Mr. Ulf Stroemberg, of the Swedish television network TV4, was the eighth journalist to die in Afghanistan since the start of the U.S.-led military campaign on Oct. 7.

Shops began to open in Kunduz after authorities announced the city had returned to calm. But women still stayed inside.

Alliance troops fighting their way into the city on Monday after a two-week siege had shot wounded Taliban and beaten holdouts hiding in their homes.

- AP

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