Captain: Warplanes in 'Cleanup Mode'
By SUSAN SEVAREID
Associated Press Writer
ABOARD THE USS ENTERPRISE (AP) -- U.S. warplanes have destroyed nearly all of the targets originally assigned to them and are now returning to strike those that were missed, the captain of the USS Enterprise aircraft carrier said Sunday.
"We're sort of in a cleanup mode right now," said the captain, who cannot be identified under military rules for covering the operation.
He said it was unclear how long it would take to mop up the other targets.
Since Oct. 7, F-14 and F/A-18 warplanes from the USS Enterprise and two other carriers have been striking militant training camps, weapons storage areas, troops, vehicles, air fields and Soviet-era military planes.
President Bush ordered the attacks after Afghanistan's ruling Taliban militia refused to hand over Osama bin Laden, chief suspect in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.
"We're finishing hitting the targets we really wanted to hit," the captain said. He added that planes were "cleaning-up" targets that were missed and, along the way, striking new targets that emerge with the help of the "massive intelligence lens that we're focusing on Afghanistan."
Talking to reporters in his office, he referred all questions on the bomb that went astray on Saturday to the U.S. Department of Defense in Washington.
He said extreme lengths are taken to avoid civilians during bombing runs and that if a pilot has any doubts about a target, the pilot "has the obligation to not drop the bomb."
A Navy F/A-18 Hornet dropped a 2,000-pound guided bomb over Kabul, intending to hit a military helicopter at the Kabul airport. Instead, the bomb hit a residential neighborhood a mile away. The Pentagon said four people were reported killed and eight injured.
The Taliban also say that about 180 men, women and children were killed in an air strike Thursday at Karam in Afghanistan's eastern mountains.
On Sunday, U.S. jets were heard again, pounding Kabul's airport, the Taliban military academy and an artillery garrison. Taliban officials said warplanes also attacked targets around the cities of Mazar-e-Sharif, Kandahar, Jalalabad and Herat.
The Enterprise captain said fighter jets must create a safe zone in the sky for C-17 cargo planes dropping humanitarian aid: "That effort is ramping up more and more ... making sure they aren't being shot at."
There are indications, he said, that the Taliban are burning some of the aid and warning people not to go near it. But he said food is getting to people.
After a hectic 40-hour stretch of continuous flight operations -- planes have been taking off and landing day and night since Thursday night -- the Enterprise had returned to launching 65 to 75 sorties during 15 hours of overnight flight operations, the captain said.
Afterward, exhausted crew members slept or unwound -- some with books, one with a guitar and others enjoying a boxing match in the hangar.
All tactical air operations for the Afghanistan campaign are being handled by Navy pilots with the help of Air Force refueling planes.
Being "the only game in town" requires more planning, more dependence on refueling and more time for pilots in the cockpit, the captain said. Missions are running more than six hours, twice the time many pilots spent in the cockpit during past missions over Iraq, he said.
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