U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, aboard a plane en route to Florida, told reporters flying with him that the site attacked was clearly "a leadership area." Though he said he didn't know who was in the compound at the time of the bombing, "Whoever was there is going to wish they weren't."

Meanwhile, as many as 1,100 U.S. Marines were arriving at an airstrip near the southern Afghanistan town of Kandahar -- last major outpost of the Taliban. Operating from the airstrip, Marines are to search for Osama bin Laden and members of his Al Qaeda network.

At the Qalai Janghi fortress prison in Afghanistan, scores of bodies could be seen, their deaths the result of a three-day revolt by Taliban prisoners. Though the main force of the rebellion was crushed -- with the help of U.S. airstrikes -- 30 to 40 men were reportedly still holding out inside the facility's mud walls.

And in Germany, multilateral talks on establishing a power-sharing government in postwar Afghanistan began with four Afghan factions apparently agreeing that former King Mohammad Zaher Shah should play a symbolic, unifying role, though none want to see the monarchy return. The king, 87, has been living in exile in Rome since 1973.

Copyright © 1997-2002 The Morrock News Service. All rights reserved.

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