Top bin Laden aide believed killed

KABUL, Afghanistan -- In twin blows to the Taliban and al-Qaida, the regime's supreme leader was reported ready Friday to abandon his home base of Kandahar, and U.S. officials disclosed that Osama bin Laden's military chief may have been killed.

The developments came as U.S. warplanes struck the Taliban's two remaining strongholds, Kandahar and the northern city of Kunduz, on the first day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

If confirmed, the death of bin Laden's military chief Mohammed Atef would deal a serious setback to the al-Qaida terrorist network.

Its Taliban protectors are already reeling from sweeping territorial losses and their flight from the capital, Kabul, this week. U.S. officials said the Taliban had lost control of more than two-thirds of Afghanistan.

Atef was a close confidant of bin Laden, and his daughter was married to bin Laden's son. U.S. officials suspect him of involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, which triggered the current military confrontation.

One U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Atef is believed to have died during an American airstrike earlier this week near Kabul, the Afghan capital. Another official said Atef's body has not been located.

Military officials skeptical

The report that the Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar was ready to leave Kandahar would be a dramatic development, if borne out -- amounting to Taliban abandonment of the city that was its birthplace. American military officials were skeptical.

"I don't put much stock in at this point. I don't believe it," said Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem, in Washington.

"I think that our forces who are there are still operating under the assumption that it is a hostile environment. I think the opposition groups are operating in the same way."

The Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press agency said Omar had agreed to leave the city within 24 hours and would head for the mountains, turning it over to local leaders from Pashtun tribes -- ethnic kin to most of the top Taliban leadership.

Under the deal reportedly reached with tribal leaders, control of the city would pass to Mullah Naqibullah and Haji Basher, two former commanders of Afghan resistance forces in the war against Soviet invaders. Basher is close to Yunus Khalis, a Pashtun leader who took over the northeastern city of Jalalabad this week.

Local pressures

An official of Harkat ul-Mujahedeen, a Pakistan-based group allied with the Taliban, said Omar was pressured by local leaders to leave the city and end U.S. attacks. Reluctantly, Omar accepted the deal Friday night in return for safe passage out of the city, the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The South Asian Dispatch Agency quoted Taliban official Mohammad Jamal as confirming the decision to leave Kandahar, saying "we have been asked to re-group to prepare for the next phase of jihad," or holy war.

The agency's correspondent in Kandahar reported several pickup trucks loaded with Taliban fighters heading south out of the city.

Hamid Karzai, a Pashtun leader who has been trying to organize an anti-Taliban uprising, told CNN that Taliban leaders would be offered amnesty if they surrendered and gave up their weapons. If they leave Kandahar, he said, they would have nowhere else to go.

Karzai's brother Ahmed told The Associated Press that Hamid Karzai was now in control of the capital of Uruzgan province, Tarin Kot. The Taliban governor has left the province, and Karzai moved in Friday, Ahmed Karzai said in a phone interview from the Pakistani city of Quetta.

Contradictory reports about conditions inside Kandahar had swirled in past days. U.S. officials had said there were reports of street fighting, but arriving refugees and even a leader of Pashtun anti-Taliban forces had said the Taliban appeared to retain their grip on the city.

Bombing Kandahar

U.S. planes bombed Kandahar again overnight, continuing a pattern of relentless strikes on the city and its environs. The Afghan Islamic Press said the Taliban's foreign ministry office was wrecked, along with a mosque located in the eastern part of the city.

It claimed at least 11 civilians were killed, but that could not be independently confirmed.

In the north of Afghanistan, fighters from the northern alliance were laying siege to the city of Kunduz, backed by U.S. airstrikes. "Kunduz is at a standoff," Stufflebeem said, "and there are a number of reports that indicate there are ... forces determined to fight and they're dug in."

The defenders include an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 foreigners loyal to bin Laden. They are much less likely than Afghan Taliban to simply negotiate a surrender or slip away, as the bulk of Taliban forces did in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif and in Kabul.