Afghanistan's Taliban regime has set up "suicide death squads" made up mainly of "Afghan Arabs" to attack US and British ground forces in a future phase of the US-led campaign, a report said Thursday.
Dozens of suicide commandos have been trained in the use of car bombs and light aircraft in camps of prime terror suspect Osama bin Laden in Jalalabad, Khost and around the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar, the London-based Saudi daily Asharq al-Awsat said.
The commandos were trained to carry out suicide attacks against troop concentrations and special forces, the paper said, quoting sources close to the "Afghan Arabs" (Arab militants who fought alongside the Afghan mujahideen against the Soviets in the 1980s) in the Pakistani border city of Peshawar.
The aim is to "inflict the largest possible number of casualties among British and US special forces" when they start landing in Afghanistan "in the next few weeks," it said in its London-datelined dispatch.
The sources noted that suicide attacks were not carried out during the war against the Soviet invasion or the subsequent civil war.
Afghanistan is the target of a month-old US-led air campaign because of the Taliban's refusal to hand over bin Laden to the United States, which accuses him of masterminding the September 11 terror attacks on New York and Washington -- DUBAI, (AFP)
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
