After three harrowing months in captivity, two American women and six other foreign relief workers accused by the Taliban of preaching Christianity were freed Wednesday and reported safe in Pakistan after being ferried out of the country by U.S. military helicopters.
While the Pentagon labeled the action a escue,"" two senior defense officials said the aid workers, including a young woman from northern Virginia, were turned over peacefully by the Taliban to a nongovernmental group that was not identified.
The helicopter flight, which took place after 2 a.m. Thursday in Afghanistan, ended a humanitarian subplot to the drama of the war against the Taliban and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network. The eight had been imprisoned before the American bombing began last month, and their guards made sure to take them along even as the Taliban retreated Tuesday night from Kabul, Afghanistan's capital.
""I'm glad to report to the American people that this chapter of the Afghan theater has ended in a very positive and constructive way,"" President Bush said in a garage at his ranch, where he was playing host to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The United States had rejected attempts by the Taliban to use the aid workers as bargaining chips, officials said.
Three U.S. Special Forces helicopters were dispatched to a field near the town of Ghazni, about 50 miles southwest of Kabul, to pick up the aid workers. They were then flown out of Afghanistan to Pakistan. A Pentagon statement said the workers ""seem to be in good physical condition.""
The two Americans were Heather Mercer, 24, who grew up in Vienna, Va., and Dayna Curry, 29, of Thompson's Station, Tenn. The two worked with Shelter Now International, a Christian relief agency that supported bakeries and other humanitarian efforts in Kabul.
The aid workers were arrested, along with 16 Afghans, Aug. 3 and charged by the Taliban's Department for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice with teaching Christianity to Afghans in Kabul'a particularly serious offense under the militia's strict Islamic rule.
Opposition forces claimed control of nearly all of Afghanistan Wednesday amid signs that Taliban soldiers had fled to the hills to prepare for the kind of guerrilla warfare they once waged against Soviet troops.
Newly active opposition forces from the dominant Pashtun ethnic group, from whom the Taliban had drawn most of its support, opened a new front and reportedly seized the airport in Kandahar. Pentagon officials said intelligence reports appeared to confirm that Kandahar was under siege and many of the Taliban have left.
Adding to the Taliban's woes, Pentagon officials confirmed that U.S. bombs struck a building where Taliban leaders had gathered earlier this week. A Defense Department official, speaking anonymously, could not confirm whether alleged terrorist leader Osama bin Laden was among the leaders in the building when it was struck.
""There was a target with a significant number of leadership,"" the official said.
At a Pentagon briefing, Rear Adm. John D. Stufflebeem said, ""Anti-Taliban opposition groups in southern Afghanistan are rebelling against Taliban control, especially near Kandahar. There are a number of tribes'Pashtun tribes in the south'who would appear now to be opposing the Taliban.""
If rebels capture and hold Kandahar, the Taliban's spiritual center, it could mark the end of the ground war in Afghanistan, military analysts said. On Tuesday, the Northern Alliance swarmed into the Afghan capital, Kabul.
""It is ... gratifying to see the Taliban fleeing and the people of Afghanistan getting their country back,"" U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said during a visit to the site of the World Trade Center, which was destroyed along with part of the Pentagon in the Sept. 11 attacks. ""On the other hand, our task is to find the al Qaeda and the Taliban leadership, and we still have that ahead of us.\
