Afghans storm U.S. embassy

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Shouting "Long Live Osama!" and "Death to America!" thousands of protesters burned an effigy of President Bush on Wednesday, then stormed the abandoned U.S. Embassy in the Afghan capital, torching old cars and a guardhouse and tearing down the U.S. seal above the entrance. \nIn northern Afghanistan, where an opposition alliance is fighting troops of the hard-line Taliban government, heavy new fighting was reported. \nRadio Kabul quoted unidentified government officials as saying Taliban forces pushed back opposition troops in the Razi district of Badghis province in northwestern Afghanistan. The officials said opposition fighters were killed, without providing an exact number, and weapons were confiscated. An opposition commander, Abdul Rashid Dostum, confirmed the report. \nThe Taliban's leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, appealed to Afghans who have fled the capital, Kabul, to come home. Even if the city is attacked, they will be safe, he said in a statement faxed to news organizations in neighboring Pakistan. \nThe demonstration at the U.S. Embassy, organized by students at Kabul University, was the largest anti-American protest in Kabul since the Sept. 11 terror attacks. The United States suspects Saudi exile Osama bin Laden orchestrated the attacks and has ordered the Taliban, who have been sheltering him for five years, to turn him over or face punishment. \nThe old embassy compound was guarded by a few Afghan security guards who were no match for the crowd. The last U.S. diplomats left the embassy in January 1989 just ahead of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. \nSmoke billowed into the sky after about five vehicles were set afire in the embassy compound, and several men used hammers to remove the large circular U.S. seal above the front entrance. Taliban authorities eventually dispersed the protesters and extinguished the fires. \n"It's just another sign of the fact that this is serious," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said of the attack on the embassy. "It doesn't change anything about what the president has said or what the mission of the United States will be." \nState Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the Bush administration holds the Taliban responsible for the safety of U.S. facilities in areas under their control, noting that much of the damage occurred before Taliban security units arrived. \n"I don't think we think that coming after the fire is started is good enough," Boucher said. \nIn Pakistan's capital, Islamabad, Pakistani Gen. Rashid Qureshi said the United States and Pakistan had reached "complete unanimity" on military preparations for combating bin Laden's terrorist network. \nQureshi, the spokesman for President Pervez Musharraf, said there was "no difference of opinion between Pakistan and America on the issue of combating terrorism." He gave no details of the agreement. \nHowever, Pakistan's government opposes efforts to bolster the northern alliance of opposition Afghan groups, which has been battling the Taliban since 1996. Russia has already announced it will provide weapons and ammunition to the northern alliance. \nEarlier Wednesday, Pakistani officials said both sides had agreed to minimize the use of ground forces in any strike. That may mean the United States was primarily interested in gaining permission to use Pakistani airspace for possible attacks against bin Laden's training camps, and perhaps access to Pakistani military airfields. \nPakistan is the only country that still has diplomatic ties to the Taliban, and the United States is keen to receive Pakistani intelligence as it tries to locate bin Laden's hide-outs. \nA Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokesman, Riaz Mohammed Khan, said the fight was not against Afghanistan or its people, but against terrorism. \n"Pakistan cannot and can never join in any hostile action against Afghanistan or the Afghan people, we are deeply conscious that the destinies of the two people are intertwined," said Khan. \nAnti-government protests have been held in cities across Pakistan since Musharraf pledged to support U.S. military action in Afghanistan. \nOn Wednesday, attackers threw a grenade and opened fire on hundreds of people gathering in Karachi for what would have been the first public meeting supporting Musharraf. At least 12 people were injured, police and witnesses said. The assailants fled. \nIn northern Afghanistan, new battles broke out between Taliban and opposition fighters in the provinces of Samangan and Balkh. Mohammed Ashraf Nadeem, a spokesman for the opposition's northern alliance, said both sides used artillery, rocket launchers, tanks and machine guns, but that neither managed to take over new territory. \nNadeem, reached by telephone from Kabul, said the Taliban had rushed 3,000 new troops to the region from Kandahar, the southern city where the Taliban are based. \nNo casualty toll was immediately available, and his account of the fighting could not be independently confirmed.