World News 30-11-2001 Final Fight For Kandahar Begins who: US Forces what: Begin final battle for Taliban stronghold where: Afghanistan when: Yesterday snippet: "The struggle to deprive the Taliban of any pretence to power in Afghanistan appeared to be entering its endgame last night as their three enemies - local fighters, the US military, and naked fear - closed in on Kandahar, their last urban refuge," reports the Guardian`s Rory McCarthy today. Mohamed Jalal Khan, one of the local commanders who has taken up arms against his former Taliban allies, said yesterday: "Our forces are five kilometres east off Kandahar airport. We hope to capture Kandahar soon." "Around-the-clock US bombing of Taleban forces in and near Kandahar has intensified over the past few days," says Roland Watson in the Times. "US Marines have continued to arrive at a desert airstrip within striking distance of the city, taking the number at Forward Operating Base Rhino to more than 1,000." Despite the bombing, Taleban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar has told his fighters that there is no question of surrender, and no need for negotiations, says BBC Online: "Don`t vacate any areas," Mullah Omar said. "This is not a question of tribes - this is a question of Islam." Meanwhile, the Telegraph reports that the US is planning "how best to attack the Tora Bora mountain cave complex where Osama bin Laden and al-Qa`eda leaders are believed to be hiding. Tora Bora, one of two places where the US is hunting for bin Laden. is in a valley which narrows into a labyrinth of caves, deep trenches and wooded cliffs, making it all but impregnable." US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld admitted any attempt to inflitrate the caves would be perilous: "Our efforts, of course, will be shifting from cities at some point to hunting down and rooting out terrorists where they hide... this is difficult work, it`s dangerous work," he said yesterday. [... more]

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