Taliban 'switching to bombs'

2003-08-07 13:56

Bagram Air Base - Taliban militants are increasingly using remote-control bombs rather than rockets to attack coalition and government troops in Afghanistan, says a United States military official.

"The remote-control improvised device (bomb) is now the preferred method of terrorism for the Taliban," said US air force Lieutenant-Colonel Douglas Lefforge at the coalition's headquarters 50km north of Kabul.

Lefforge said US-led coalition troops had found increasing numbers of remote-control bombs in recent months.

Four Afghan men defused and handed over a remote-control home-made bomb to coalition forces in the northeastern city of Asadabad in Kunar province on Monday, the colonel said.

Taliban remnants and their al-Qaeda allies had favoured 107mm rockets as their weapon of choice, but they are inaccurate and rarely cause damage or casualties.

Taliban fighters were also paying or threatening local Afghans to carry out rocket attacks on coalition troops, Lefforge said on Wednesday.

Keeping an eye on the bad guys

US-led coalition troops and Afghan soldiers at a base in southeastern Paktia province came under mortar attack on Wednesday, but there were no casualties, said Lefforge said.

The base lies in the Zormat valley 100km south of Kabul, where about 1 000 Afghan soldiers backed by US and Italian troops have just completed a major anti-Taliban mission, dubbed Operation Warrior Sweep.

Lefforge said the 14-day mission, the first major combat operation for the nascent Afghan army, ended last week, but troops were still in the region "to keep an eye on the bad guys".

Seven suspected Taliban were captured and several weapons caches discovered during the operation.

A US-led coalition force of about 12 500 troops, mostly American, is hunting down Taliban and al-Qaeda holdouts, mainly along the 2 400km Afghan-Pakistan border.

- AFP