A cloud of dust covered the Shomali plain just north of Kabul, making it hard to see just what was happening. Taliban forces fired anti-aircraft guns, and there were sporadic exchanges of fire between the Islamic militia and forces of the opposition northern alliance.
"I could hear the bombing north of Kabul in the distance and I could feel the ground shake," northern alliance fighter Abdul Same, 22, said of Monday's action.
The foreign minister of Afghanistan's government-in-exile on Sunday had praised the United States for stepping up its air strikes against Taliban front-line positions, saying victory can be achieved sooner if similar assaults continue.
The minister, Abdullah, had recently criticized the American airstrikes as not being intense enough, and opposition commanders say they haven't done enough to advance the anti-Taliban cause.
Calls for stepped-up air attacks also came from Abdul Vadud, the military attache at the opposition-controlled Afghan Embassy in the Tajik capital of Dushanbe, who said northern alliance forces needed air support to advance on the strategic northern town of Mazar-e-Sharif.
"The U.S. and allied command has been given data about the deployment of the Taliban garrison in Mazar-e-Sharif, their firing outposts and weapons and ammunition depots," he said in Dushanbe late Sunday.
Vadud said the alliance plans to start a decisive operation to capture the town within 2-3 days so as to complete it by the start of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan in mid-November. One wing of opposition forces is 3 to 5 kilometers (2 to 3 miles) from the city in the area of its airport and another 5 kilometers (3 miles) from the airport, he said.
The attache also claimed that some 100 Taliban fighters were killed and more than 20 were captured in fighting over the weekend.
Alliance forces have been beaten back from Mazar-e-Sharif in recent fighting by the heavily armed Taliban units there, and many experts have doubts about their ability to seize the city. Some alliance officials have said the city was unlikely to fall soon.
Abdullah, meanwhile, called the apparent accidental bombing by U.S. jets of an opposition-held village Saturday "a tragic mistake" that might have been avoided with greater coordination between U.S. forces and the northern-based opposition alliance.
The strikes came during the heaviest day of bombing during a weeklong U.S. campaign to pound Taliban front-line positions north of the capital of Kabul. The Pentagon said Saturday it had no information on reports that the villages had been hit.
The attack destroyed a two-story house, injuring six of its inhabitants who had fled Taliban-held territory only a month ago, hoping to escape the line of fire. Another four people were wounded in an adjacent house in the village, which is located about two kilometers (a mile) from the front line.
In a press conference Sunday in Jabal Saraj, an opposition stronghold north of Kabul, Abdullah praised the intensity of Saturday's airstrikes.
"Yesterday's damage to the Taliban's capacity on the front line was very significant," he said. "If yesterday's type of bombing becomes a standard, the objective of eradicating terrorism could be achieved much quicker."
It wasn't known if Saturday's heavy raids were in response to the criticism by the northern alliance. The Pentagon has said it is following its own game plane, not that of the opposition alliance.
Abdullah criticized the Pakistani government for not doing enough to halt thousands of pro-Taliban recruits reportedly crossing into Afghanistan to help fight the United States.
"Pakistan cannot claim to be cooperating with the international alliance and get debt relief and then allow thousands of people to cross the border to join the battle against the people of Afghanistan," Abdullah said.
President George W. Bush launched the air strikes Oct. 7 after the ruling Taliban refused to hand over Osama bin Laden, the prime suspect in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States that killed about 4,000 people.
