http://www.myafghan.com/news.asp?id=-2146302480
Taliban officials fleeing Afghan capital fearing attacks
Officials from Afghanistan's ruling Taliban movement have started to flee
the capital, Kabul, amid growing expectations of US attacks, according to
witnesses.
Taliban officials and their families were seen heading out of the city for
the countryside, but it was not clear if this was under instruction from
their spiritual leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, they said.
Those fleeing appeared mainly to be junior commanders and officials. The
majority of the leadership is based in the southern city of Kandahar.
Witnesses said hundreds of ordinary residents of the capital were also
trying to escape.
Fear of reprisal has triggered a rush to get families out of the cities.
Thousands of people have flooded over the eastern border to the already
overflowing refugee camps of Pakistan.
These who couldn't leave were bracing for war, stocking up on food as prices
soared and the Afghani currency slid.
With Iran announcing it was sealing its eastern border with Afghanistan,
opposition fighters controlling a narrow northern corridor and Pakistan
pledging to support US anti-terrorism efforts, Kabul residents were feeling
increasingly vulnerable.
The spiritual leader of the Taliban movement yesterday called an urgent
meeting of senior Islamic clerics to discuss the defence of his isolated
nation and he appealed to Muslim nations for help.
The Taliban insist neither they nor bin Laden had the capacity to organise
an international plot that saw trained pilots hijack large passenger jets
and crash them into the World Trade Centre towers in New York and the
Pentagon in Washington. (Reuters)
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