Taliban Surrender Last Stronghold in Afghanistan

ByABC News
December 7, 2001, 8:41 PM

Dec. 7 -- Hours after the Taliban surrendered Kandahar, their last stronghold, the situation in the southern Afghan city was chaotic and the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban leader remained unclear.

U.S. fighter jets continued to drop bombs on the Tora Bora complex in eastern Afghanistan, even as Afghan opposition forces began a cave-by-cave search for bin Laden, the prime suspect on the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington.

In Kandahar, rival mujahideen leaders reportedly sent their troops into the city that once served as the spiritual capital of the Taliban, but the U.S. commander, Gen. Tommy Franks, said it would take two or three days for the United States to receive a reliable assessment of the situation.

Speaking to reporters about the possible location of the Taliban's spiritual leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, at a news conference today in Tampa, Fla., Franks said, "We do not have any reason to believe Mullah Omar has left Kandahar, nor do we have information that he is in Kandahar."

"We simply do not know where he is right now but that does not lead me to believe he has vanished," he said.

Likening the situation in Kandahar today to the fall of the northern Afghan cities of Mazar-e-Sharif and Kunduz last month, Franks cautioned that the conditions in Afghanistan were still "unstable, chaotic and dangerous."

Responding to reports that a number of Taliban fighters had fled Kandahar with their weapons, Franks said U.S. troops were engaging the Taliban fighters with strikes from airplanes, helicopters and "with direct fire from the ground."

Franks said U.S. forces were working with anti-Taliban allies to prevent Taliban fighters from fleeing Kandahar, he would not rule out the possibility that U.S. Marines might enter the southern city.

Omar Declared a Fugitive

Earlier today, Afghanistan's newly appointed interim leader Hamid Karzai told news organizations the Taliban regime was "effectively finished." Karzai endorsed Washington's original demand to bring Omar to justice and declared the reclusive Taliban chief a fugitive.