Agence France-Presse,
KABUL (AFP): Hundreds of US and Afghan soldiers attacked Al-Qaeda positions in eastern Afghanistan Wednesday as a bomb blast claimed by the Taliban killed three German nationals in the capital, officials said.
The air and ground assault in the mountainous Tora Bora region, near the border with Pakistan, was launched about a day ago against carefully targeted positions, US military spokeswoman Captain Vanessa Bowman told AFP.
Fugitive Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was last spotted in the Tora Bora mountains in 2001.
“US and Afghan forces engaged Al-Qaeda and other violent extremist fighters in eastern Afghanistan during a combined arms assault using precision munitions,” Bowman added in a statement.
The mountainous and remote region is an ideal environment to conceal militant support bases and training sites, as well as plan attacks, she said.
“The targets were carefully chosen to pinpoint enemy positions and eliminate the likelihood of harming innocent civilians,” she said.
Afghan media reports said several Taliban been killed in the operation, but this was not independently confirmed to AFP. Dozens of families had fled the area to escape the fighting, the Pajhwork Afghan New agency reported.
The mountainous Tora Bora region, some 50 kilometres (30 miles) south of the eastern city of Jalalabad, was the scene of a major US-led operation in December 2001 to capture bin Laden whose headquarters were said to be based there.
The area, a complex of caves, in known as the last stronghold of Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. The 1996-2001 Taliban government sheltered Al-Qaeda and allowed it to operate training camps within Afghanistan.
The hardline regime was driven from power in 2001 in a US-led invasion launched weeks after the 9/11 attacks by Al-Qaeda.
It has regrouped to carry out near daily attacks on allies of the Afghan government, including officials and troops.
In one such attack two German police officers and a German foreign ministry employee were killed in Kabul Wednesday.
A fourth German was wounded in the attack, Germany's biggest loss of life in the war-torn country since May. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said he felt “deep sadness and horror” at their deaths.
A four-wheel-drive vehicle, of the type normally used by military forces and diplomats in Kabul, was ripped apart and tipped over on its side, said an AFP photographer at the scene.
Taliban spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi told AFP by phone that his organisation was responsible.
In Berlin, German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schauble said all three dead had been members of the German federal police.
European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana denounced the attack.
“I condemn in the strongest possible terms this terrorist act,” he said in a statement from Brussels.
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner also condemned the killings as an “unacceptable display of intolerance and violence.”
In a statement, Kouchner offered his condolences to the victims' families and pledged France's “solidarity and support” to Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
Germany has about 3,000 troops in Afghanistan as part of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, which along with US-led coalition troops is trying to support the Kabul government.
But despite nearly 50,000 international troops working with Afghan security forces, the Al-Qaeda backed insurgency of the Taliban has intensified this year.
