The Afghan capital Kabul was rocked by explosions Monday as US-led forces launched aerial attacks against Taliban targets across the country for a second consecutive night.
Afghan opposition forces said they had shelled the strategic Taliban-held town of Mazar-e-Sharif in coordination with US bombing raids, and had launched offensives on various fronts elsewhere in northern Afghanistan.
Frightened Kabul residents reported bombs hitting targets on the outskirts of the city and near the airport as Taliban anti-aircraft batteries opened up on fighter jets that could be heard roaring across the night sky.
The Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press agency said the strikes had targeted television towers just outside Kabul, but added that one bomb had fallen near the city's main 400-bed hospital.
There was no confirmation of any casualties.
Witnesses in the hilltop village of Tobdara, about 50 kilometers north of Kabul, said they saw the lights of aircraft above the capital followed by six or seven yellow flashes in quick succession.
Electricity was cut in Kabul soon after the strikes began at around 8:30pm (1600 GMT).
A guard at the AFP office, located in a northern wealthy residential neighborhood not far from the airport, said one bomb fell so close that shrapnel was embedded in the wall of the building.
"The explosions have stopped now, but there is absolutely no lighting and all the local telephones are out of service," one resident said.
Opposition sources said aerial attacks were also carried out on airports and other military-related installations in the cities of Kandahar, Jalalabad and Kunduz -- in a similar pattern to the first wave of combined US and British strikes launched on Sunday night.
The allied forces have warned of sustained attacks that could last for "weeks" as they hunt down the network of suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden and his Taliban protectors.
"We'll be continuing to collect damage assessments and we'll be striking additional targets as appropriate as well as being prepared to address emerging targets as they appear," US Defense Secretary Rumsfeld said Monday.
A resident living not far from the airport in the southern Taliban stronghold of Kandahar said he felt three large explosions.
"I didn't see any bombs falling but I felt the ground shake. People are very emotional and angry and of course they're scared," he told AFP.
In northern Afghanistan, opposition forces said they were shelling Taliban positions in Mazar-i-Sharif in conjunction with US-led air strikes.
"Military operations, the airport and other Taliban centers of power are being targeted," opposition spokesman Mohammad Ashraf Nadeem told AFP via satellite phone.
"You can hear jets and rockets and they keep getting louder."
AIP, which has close contacts with the Taliban, later also reported that the ruling Islamic militia was under fire in Mazar-i-Sharif and another northern city, Kunduz.
Elsewhere in the north, opposition foreign affairs spokesman Abdullah Abdullah said anti-Taliban forces had launched attacks in the provinces of Badghis, Ghor, Balkh and Samangan on Monday night.
Abdullah claimed that 1,200 Taliban soldiers changed sides in northeastern Baghlan, along with 40 commanders.
"By joining our forces the Taliban lost a main supply route," he said, confirming that the opposition had launched attacks to coincide with the US-led air strikes.
The Taliban has remained defiant in the face of the allied onslaught, saying that for all the sophisticated weaponry being deployed in the attacks -- long anticipated after the September 11 terror assault on New York and Washington -- prime suspect Osama bin Laden was safe and well -- KABUL (AFP)
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