AFGHANISTAN: US military forces are keeping up their pressure on the remnants of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, with bombers pounding a former base yesterday. Meanwhile, the US has sought to ease concerns of human-rights groups about the treatment of prisoners.
The US and its Afghan allies are continuing to round up Osama bin Laden's followers and to strike at remnants of the militant organisation.
US planes launched fresh air raids on a suspected al-Qaeda base in eastern Afghanistan's Khost region overnight, the Afghan Islamic Press reported yesterday.
Terrorist suspects are continuing to be rounded up, with close to 400 being detained at a provisional detention centre at Kandahar airport. The first 20 to be transferred to new prison at the US Navy base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba were flown out of the base late on Thursday. Thirty new suspects arrived on Friday night, bringing the total to 391.
The US has said that the International Red Cross would be allowed to examine the treatment of the prisoners after concerns were raised about their human rights.
Human rights groups had voiced concern that the prisoners were being kept in poor conditions.
Labour MP Mr Donald Anderson, chairman of the Commons foreign affairs select committee, said the prisoners must be treated in a civilised way.
He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "Whatever the formal category, these prisoners still have legal rights and what we've heard already suggests that human rights are indeed being put in jeopardy."
US Defence Secretary Mr Donald Rumsfeld said the men were not prisoners of war but "unlawful combatants" and therefore had no rights under the GenevaConvention.
In Afghanistan, the deployment of troops to make up an international security force was slowed by deteriorating weather conditions, including some of the heaviest rain seen in Kabul in years, which effectively closed the two airports servicing the Afghan capital yesterday.
Efforts to apprehend and question senior Taliban cadres have been frustrated in recent weeks with the release of top officials by provincial authorities in the southern province of Kandahar, the former base of the Islamic militia's leadership.
On Saturday, the interim government added its voice to US criticism of the release of eight Taliban officials, including the regime's former justice minister, Nooruddin Turabi.
After the officials turned themselves in, Kandahar authorities allowed them to leave without seeking permission from the central government, interior minister Mr Yunus Qanooni said.
"Turabi was a Taliban minister. He and other high-ranking Taliban officials do not come under the amnesty for ordinary Taliban."
As part of an attempt to replace Afghanistan's rival militias with a unified national army, the interim administration has decided to recruit more than 6,000 soldiers, Afghan television announced.
Meanwhile, six armed Arab fighters holed up for more than a month in a hospital in Afghanistan's south-eastern city of Kandahar are showing signs of weakening, a guard said yesterday.
The Arabs are presumed to be members of al-Qaeda. By Sunday they had been without food for four days and water for 10 days, said the guard, Mr Bakht Mohammad.
Despite their dire situation, the Arabs had rejected calls for them to surrender. Their nationalities and identities were not known, but most of them were believed to come from Yemen.