Fighting Between Taliban And Northern Alliance In Southwest Afghanistan

Taliban and Northern Alliance forces are engaged in fierce fighting near the Lashkar Gah city, centre of Helmand province in the south of Afghanistan. A Northern Alliance spokesman has told Al-Jazeera TV that the province will be liberated from the Taliban on Thursday. Helmand is one of the four provinces, totally or partially controlled by the Taliban. Meanwhile, Kandahar fighting was ceased two day ago /Kandahar is the main Taliban stronghold in the southern Afghanistan/, according to Afghan journalist Khafez Hamidullah. He said he had visited the place where American helicopters allegedly hit a column of 15 vehicles and armoured personnel carriers, but had not seen any evidence of the bombardment. According to him, American task forces seized not the Kandahar airport once constructed by Americans to make competition to the airport in the Pakistani city of Quetta, but an abandoned airstrip 65 km off the city. The journalist also said that Americans carried out airstrikes on targets southeast of Kandahar, where Osama bin Laden and mullah Omar are believed to be hiding, but no results of the bombing were reported. According to Al-Jazeera, the search for Taliban fighters and foreign mercenaries is going on in Herat, a city in the west of Afghanistan. Over 300 gunmen have been imprisoned there, including 40 mercenaries from Pakistan, Chechnya, Iraq, and Turkey.