KABUL (Islamweb & News Agencies) - Afghanistan's beleaguered Taliban decided on Friday to withdraw from their southern stronghold, Kandahar, and to take to the mountains, the Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) said.Almost seven years to the day since he captured Kandahar, Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar decided to hand it over to two former mujahideen commanders after days of talks with his military leaders, AIP quoted its own sources as saying.
If vanquished in conventional battlefield warfare, the Taliban could still move the war into a new phase -- guerrilla fighting from almost impenetrable redoubts in Afghanistan's rugged mountain fastness.
AIP reported that the Taliban said their decision to leave Kandahar was to avoid more civilian casualties, 41 days into the U.S.-led war and after two days of blistering air attacks on Kandahar by U.S. warplanes.
There was no independent confirmation of the report, which came when several Pashtun tribal leaders said they were trying to persuade the Taliban leaders to hand over Kandahar, spiritual capital of the radical Islamic movement, without bloodshed.
The Pentagon said the report was not believable.
The private Pakistan-based AIP said there was a strong possibility that the Taliban would leave their last urban bastion within the next 24 hours.
It would mark the second bodyblow in one day for the militia that imposed on its people a draconian set of rules modeled on a 1,300-year-old Islamic Utopia.
Just hours earlier, a U.S. official said Mohammed Atef, a right hand man of Osama bin Laden and whose daughter married one of the Saudi-born militant's sons this year, had been killed by a U.S. bomb in Kabul.