Contact Admin. A group of children on a mud-brick wall sang a chorus of "Airplane, airplane! Men pointed and smiled as a US jet swooped toward the Kokcha River, flying just under the high, thin clouds.
The jet launched its attack on Taliban positions two miles away, then performed a victory roll as smoke billowed from the ground, bringing cheers from the crowds of supporters of the opposition Northern Alliance in Dashti-Qala, as another US warplane circled in.
For the ethnic Tajik and Uzbek farmers here, victims of deadly Taliban air raids last year, this was payback time. The most intense US attacks on Taliban front lines in northeastern Afghanistan took place as the Northern Alliance prepared for what commanders said was an imminent major offensive on the capital, Kabul, and two other strategic northern cities.
Troops in full battle gear and trucks bearing heavy weapons moved toward the front in anticipation of an offensive on the Taliban stronghold in the regional capital of Taloqan.
A force of commandos took up positions on the outskirts of Kabul to join in a planned attack. US forces also kept up attacks in southern Afghanistan. Early today, US fighter planes dropped three large bombs on camps used by fighters of suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden's Qaeda organization in the Sapora region, near Kandahar, according to the South Asian Dispatch Agency. In the Northern Alliance stronghold of Kishim, 35 miles east of Taloqan, opposition troops at a radio base passed on orders to prepare for an attack to commanders on the front.
