U.S. jets target Afghanistan's capital

U.S. jets attacked targets in the heart of Afghanistan's capital today, the Associated Press reported.

Residents said at least five civilians--including four members of one family-- were killed when bombs crashed into residential areas in Kabul.

In Washington, defense sources said U.S. special forces were now in place aboard the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Kitty Hawk in the Indian Ocean--ready for any search-and-destroy missions ordered against Osama bin Laden and his Taliban allies. Attacks on the capital began before dawn when U.S. warplanes pounded areas around the presidential palace and beyond, drawing heavy anti- aircraft barrages. In northwestern Pakistan, a militant Muslim leader said Thursday that pro-Taliban groups there were ready to offer tens of thousands of volunteers to help the Taliban if U.S. ground troops joined the fight.

A veteran al-Qaida fighter was killed by a U.S. airstrike in Afghanistan, the first reported death of an established figure from bin Laden's terror network in the nearly two-week bombardment, a London-based Islamic group said today. The Egyptian militant, Abu Baseer al-Masri, was killed by a U.S. bomb Sunday near Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan, the Islamic Observation Center said in an e-mailed statement to the AP. Al- Masri was a longtime member of the Egyptian radical group al- Gamaa al-Islamiya and had been in Afghanistan for at least 10 years, much of the time in al-Qaida camps, former fighters in Afghanistan said.

Meanwhile, three of four bin Laden disciples convicted in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa received life without parole today in New York City. Khalfan Khamis Mohamed, 28, was the first of the four defendants to be sentenced in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. He and Mohamed Rashed Al-'Owhali, 24, were sentenced to life without parole for direct involvement in the bombings. Mohamed Sadeek Odeh, 36, of Jordan, received the same sentence for conspiracy. He had faced a possible death penalty in the case, but the jury could not agree on that sentence.