Bin Laden aide renews call for holy war, warns attacks won't stop

10/10/2001

By GREGG JONES / The Dallas Morning News

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — As U.S. bombs and cruise missiles fell on Afghanistan for a third day Tuesday, Osama bin Laden's spokesman praised the hijackers who flew planes into the Pentagon and World Trade Center for their "good deed" and issued another call for a holy war against the United States.

Al-Qaeda spokesman Sulaiman Abu Ghaith said the Sept. 11 attacks in New York and Washington had "moved the battle into the heart of America."

The United States will suffer more such attacks "until America leaves our land, until it stops supporting Israel, until it stops the blockade against Iraq," he said in a videotaped statement aired by the al-Jazeera satellite television channel based in Qatar.

"America must know that the storm of airplanes will not stop, and there are thousands of young people who look forward to death like the Americans look forward to life," Mr. Abu Ghaith said.

In other developments Tuesday, a U.S. airstrike near the Afghan capital of Kabul killed four civilian employees of a U.N. mine-clearing program. They were the first independently confirmed civilian deaths since the U.S. attacks began Sunday.

Eight foreign aid workers detained in Kabul on charges of preaching Christianity were reportedly unhurt as of Tuesday morning. The families of the eight — including Baylor University graduates Dayna Curry and Heather Mercer — received word that the detainees were "fine, not hurt, not harmed," said Nancy Cassell, mother of Ms. Curry.

In Quetta, Pakistan, three people were killed in a second day of violent anti-American demonstrations.

Mr. Abu Ghaith, the spokesman of Mr. bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization, denounced the U.S. strikes as "a crusade with the objective of getting rid of the Islamic nation" in his call for a Muslim holy war.

"American interests are everywhere, all over the world," he said. "Every Muslim has to play his real and true role and uphold his religion. Fighting and jihad are a duty."

U.S. forces launched the attacks on Afghanistan on Sunday evening after the radical Taliban regime refused repeated Bush administration demands to surrender Mr. bin Laden, a Taliban "guest" since 1996. U.S. officials describe Mr. bin Laden as the prime suspect in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States.

It wasn't clear when the latest al-Qaeda statement was filmed. Mr. Abu Ghaith appeared in a similar videotaped statement aired on Sunday, shortly after the U.S. attacks on Afghanistan began.

But Tuesday's statement was more explicit in praising the men who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks, and it cast the consequences of the U.S. strikes on Afghanistan in chilling terms.

"America must know that by coming to the land of Afghanistan, they have opened a new page of animosity between us and the forces of the unbelievers," he said. "... The Americans have opened a door that will never be closed."

The four Afghan employees of a U.N. mine-clearing program were killed Tuesday when a cruise missile slammed into the program's office building near a Taliban radio tower outside Kabul, U.N. officials said. The deaths prompted a U.N. appeal to protect the lives of innocent civilians inside Afghanistan.

"People need to distinguish between combatants and those innocent civilians who do not bear arms," U.N. spokeswoman Stephanie Bunker said in Islamabad.

Reported deaths

"Nevertheless, we regret the loss of life," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "If there were an easy way to root terrorist networks out of countries that harbor them, it would be a blessing, but there is not."

The Taliban regime says that dozens of civilians have died in three days of U.S. attacks, but those reports could not be verified.

The issue of civilian deaths has the potential to seriously undermine the U.S. military campaign against the Taliban, analysts said. There is already deep uneasiness about the U.S. military campaign throughout the Muslim world. The reports of civilian deaths and suffering could fuel the violent protests that have already erupted in Pakistan and other Islamic countries.

The situation is particularly fragile for Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, who is trying to control protests by radical Islamic groups opposed to his pledge of "full support" for the U.S. campaign.

Three people were killed in the city of Quetta, near the Afghan border, in a second day of violent anti-American demonstrations on Tuesday by pro-Taliban groups. There were smaller demonstrations and some violent clashes elsewhere.

Although the demonstrators are a tiny group of Pakistan's 145 million people, authorities moved to prevent the protests from spiraling out of control by placing three hard-line Islamic clerics under house arrest.

Clerics detained

The brother of one of the detained clerics, Atta-u-Rehman, called on members of his radical Islamic party to murder Westerners. "Wherever you see foreigners, Europeans or Americans, you can kill them," Mr. Rehman said at a rally in the northwestern city of Peshawar, Agence France-Presse reported.

In Islamabad, which has seen only small, peaceful protests since the U.S. attacks began, authorities strengthened security around government buildings, Western embassies and hotels housing foreign correspondents. The precautions included sandbagged bunkers, concrete barricades to thwart possible car bombs and soldiers armed with automatic rifles.

Details about the damage and casualties caused by the U.S. attacks have been scarce because the Afghan regime has banned foreign correspondents. But the Taliban ambassador to Pakistan — the regime's last official voice outside Afghanistan — said dozens of civilians had died in the strikes by U.S. cruise missiles and bombers. Those claims could not be verified.

Mr. bin Laden and the supreme Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, have survived the attacks and remain in Afghanistan, said Taliban Ambassador Abdul Salam Zaeef.

Mr. Zaeef denounced the United States and warned that the radical Afghan regime was "determined to offer 2 million martyrs in the name of Islam."

Inside Afghanistan, the opposition Northern Alliance has taken advantage of the U.S. airstrikes to launch offensives against the Taliban in four provinces, alliance officials said.

Faced with a potentially catastrophic humanitarian crisis inside Afghanistan, U.N. officials moved 2,000 tents to the Pakistani border cities of Peshawar and Quetta on Tuesday in preparation for up to 1.5 million new refugees. But there were no reports of any large-scale movements of people.