U.S. gunships rake Taliban stronghold

KABUL, Afghanistan -- U.S. strikes set Red Cross warehouses afire near Afghanistan's capital Tuesday, sending workers scrambling to salvage desperately needed relief goods during a bombardment that could be heard 30 miles away.

To the south, two U.S. special forces gunships entered the air war for the first time, raking the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar with cannon and heavy machine gun fire in a pre-dawn raid.

Heavy, round-the-clock attacks and the first use of the lumbering, low-flying AC-130 gunships signaled U.S. confidence that 10 days of attacks by cruise missiles and high-flying jets have crippled the air defenses of the Taliban, the Muslim militia that rules most of Afghanistan.

U.S.-led forces have used more than 2,000 bombs and missiles since opening the attacks Oct. 7, Lt. Gen. Gregory Newbold, director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Pentagon news conference. The past two days' attacks have been especially intense, putting more than 100 warplanes and five cruise missiles into the air, he said.

Tuesday's strikes were mostly against military installations and airports around Kabul, Kandahar and the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif, on which the Afghan opposition claims its forces are closing in.

Afternoon raids in the Kabul area were so strong that the detonations could be heard 30 miles north of the city, where Taliban forces are battling Afghan fighters for the opposition northern alliance.

During the afternoon raids, at least one bomb exploded in the compound of the International Committee of the Red Cross near Kabul, injuring one security guard and setting two of the seven buildings on fire.

Accidental hit

The Pentagon acknowledged that U.S. bombs accidentally hit warehouses in Kabul used by the International Committee of the Red Cross. A Navy F/A-18 Hornet dropped 1,000-pound bombs on the warehouses, the statement said.

A Pentagon statement released Tuesday night said the Red Cross buildings were among a series of warehouses targeted because U.S. forces believed the Taliban was using them to store equipment and military vehicles had been seen nearby. "U.S. forces did not know that ICRC was using one or more of the warehouses," the statement said.

Red Cross officials have protested the bombing and said that the warehouses, holding wheat, blankets and shelter materials, had the organization's symbol painted on their roofs. The Pentagon statement said the U.S. military regrets any innocent casualties and tries hard to strike only military targets.

Earlier, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer raised the possibility that anti-aircraft fire from the ground could have been responsible.

The Taliban, however, are not known to have fired surface-to-air missiles in Kabul since the first nights of the air campaign, which began Oct. 7.

The damaged Red Cross complex had been clearly marked with two red crosses, Monin said. Likely targets for airstrikes surrounded it, however: four Taliban military bases and transport and fuel depots are in the area.

In other developments:

Russia's first aid shipment arrived in Afghanistan's opposition-controlled north and the U.N. World Food Program said it expects the Uzbek government to open a vital supply route for aid into Afghanistan.

Four American C-17 cargo planes dropped 70,000 packets of food over Afghanistan overnight, bringing the total number or packets containing barley stew, rice, shortbread cookies and peanut butter delivered to 350,000.