U.S. launches attack on Afghanistan
October 7, 2001 Posted: 12:51 p.m. EDT (1651 GMT)
(CNN) -- The United States launched an attack on Afghanistan and its
ruling Taliban on Sunday in retaliation for the September 11 terrorist
strikes on New York and Washington.
The U.S. action follows several weeks of demands that the Taliban hand
over suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden, whom U.S. officials hold
responsible for the attacks. The Taliban have refused those demands.
Bin Laden has been living in Afghanistan as a guest of the Taliban, the
fundamentalist Islamic militia that rules most of Afghanistan, since
they seized power in 1996.
On Saturday (October 5), President Bush warned "there will be a heavy
price" for nations that support terrorism.
"The Taliban has been given the opportunity to surrender all the
terrorists in Afghanistan and to close down their camps and operations.
Full warning has been given, and time is running out," Bush had said.
More than 5,000 people are presumed dead after hijackers plunged
fuel-laden commercial jetliners into the Pentagon and each of the World
Trade Center's twin towers on September 11. A fourth jet crashed into a
Pennsylvania field after passengers tried to overpower the hijackers.
The United States began moving warships, aircraft and troops to
southwest Asia in the weeks after the attacks. At the same time, U.S.
diplomats worked to assemble a broad coalition of nations to support an
international campaign against terrorism, including its NATO allies,
Russia, Japan and moderate Arab states such as Jordan, Egypt and Saudi
Arabia.
The Bush administration began sharing the results of its investigation
into the September 11 attack with key allies, including the NATO
countries and Pakistan, on October 2.
The United States designated bin Laden's al Qaeda organization a
terrorist group in 1999. The organization has maintained training camps
in Afghanistan for several years, and those camps were the target of a
1998 U.S. strike after bombings at U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania
killed more than 200 people.
Bin Laden faces criminal charges in the United States in connection with
those bombings, and testimony in the trials of four men convicted of
those attacks linked them to al Qaeda.
Serbian News Network - SNN
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