U.S. warplanes unleashed their heaviest attacks yet on the Afghan capital of Kabul Wednesday night while the anti-Taliban opposition claimed that wholesale enemy defections had allowed it to sever a key north-south highway.
On the fourth day of air strikes, U.S. aircraft flying day and night raids rocked the regions around Kandahar and Kabul, including areas just west of the capital, where Osama bin Laden is believed to operate terrorist training camps.
The bombers also hit a Taliban garrison in the northern city of Mazar-eSharif, where the Afghan government is locked in a struggle with the rebel coalition called the Northern Alliance. Warplanes have hit the city for three straight days.
The American and British airstrikes on Afghanistan are aimed at flushing out and capturing or killing bin Laden and his associates in the al Qaeda organization. The United States and its allies have also targeted the ruling Taliban regime of Islamic fundamentalists, who have given shelter to bin Laden.
The Northern Alliance said Wednesday the near-total destruction of Taliban air defenses'a prime target of the bombing campaign'and the defection of commanders along a highway has left about 20,000 Taliban troops in northern Afghanistan effectively cut off from the south.
President Bush Wednesday publicized the names and photos of the 22 'most wanted terrorists''a list topped by bin Laden'as the U.S. government offered rewards of up to $5 million for information on each fugitive.
'We list their names, we publicize their pictures, we rob them of their secrecy,' Bush said at FBI headquarters as he unveiled what he called a 'new tactic' in the war against terrorism.
'These 22 individuals do not account for all of the terrorist activity in the world, but they're among the most dangerous'the leaders and key supporters, the planners and the strategists,' Bush said, 'They must be found. They will be stopped. And they will be punished.'
All 22 men are Middle Eastern natives and fugitives being sought by U.S. law enforcement officials for being named in one of five indictments handed up by grand juries for terrorist acts against the United States dating back to 1985.
'They have blood on their hands from Sept. 11 and other acts against America in Kenya, Tanzania and Yemen,' Secretary of State Colin Powell said.
Most on the list are believed to be connected to bin Laden's al Qaeda network, and some are thought to have played key roles in the Sept. 11 attacks'most notably bin Laden and his top lieutenants, Ayman al-Zawahri and Muhammed Atef.
While the whereabouts of many of those listed are unknown, law enforcement officials said they do not believe any of them are in the United States. At least seven of them are believed to be in Afghanistan and three in Lebanon.
The White House said Wednesday it was easing its new effort to restrict information available to Congress on military operations, investigations and law enforcement.
One day after members of the U.S. House and Senate from both parties objected to limitations the White House had imposed on briefing the Congress, an administration spokesperson said Bush had modified the policy so that key committees on Capitol Hill also will be brought into the informed circle.
White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said that under the new procedures, such Cabinet members as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld would brief the House and Senate Armed Services Committees on classified information, and Powell would fill in the foreign-relations panels.
'The president is going to make sure that the appropriate committees get the information they need and that the members are going to be briefed on what has been going on, how it's worked,' Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., said after a weekly breakfast meeting with Bush.
A third employee of a Florida tabloid newspaper company has been exposed to anthrax, U.S. and state officials announced Wednesday, saying there is no doubt the mysterious outbreak was caused by a criminal act.
At the same time, officials said there is no evidence that the outbreak, which has left one person dead, was connected to the Sept. 11 attacks in New York and at the Pentagon, or that anthrax bacteria were present beyond a single building in Florida.
But officials still do not know how the bacteria entered the head quarters of American Media Inc., publisher of the National Enquirer, the Star and other supermarket tabloids. Their comments Wednesday were skeptical of the notion that a quirk of nature was to blame.
Guy Lewis, acting U.S. attorney for south Florida, said investigators had 'three basic questions': how the bacteria were brought into the building, who did it and why.
'We are now conducting a criminal investigation into this matter. ... We understand it's a problem, and we will bring every resource that we have to bear on this problem, and I assure you we will solve it,' Lewis said.
Officials said that a 35-year-old woman, whom they would not identify, is the third American Media employee to show signs of having contact with the anthrax bacteria. The woman showed no symptoms of the disease, however, and has been put on antibiotics.
