AFGHANISTAN

Independent: Afghan clerics call for new holy war

Posters apparently endorsed by one of America's most wanted fugitives, Mullah Mohammed Omar, have appeared in Afghanistan calling for renewed holy war, providing a further sign that the conflict is worsening.

Signed by 600 Islamic clerics, the posters appeared amid a flurry of attacks which saw guerrillas fire rockets at a United Nations base in Kabul and at US military installations.

The deteriorating situation has been underscored in the past few days by the killing of two American special forces soldiers in an ambush in southern Afghanistan and the death of a Red Cross worker, shot through the head while on a mission to install water wells.

The posters are circulating in eastern Afghanistan – a main area of opposition to the US and the Washington-backed government of Hamid Karzai – and call for a jihad against the Americans and Afghans who work with them.

They aim to undermine efforts by Karzai to build a national army and police force to establish control over the country. Six Afghan soldiers have been killed.

Suspicion is directed at the Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and elements of al-Qa'ida and Taliban with whom he appears to have forged links. Recent reports of interviews with Taliban loyalists in hiding in tribal regions of Pakistan say they have regrouped and built an alliance with Hekmatyar's Hezb-e-Islami faction. Preparations are said to be under way for the next phase – hit-and-run attacks.

The US military and international peacekeepers say that recent attacks against them are not linked to the invasion of Iraq.

But the text of the posters – reportedly a decree from the Taliban leader Mullah Omar himself – made a specific link: "Whenever the non-Muslims attack a Muslim land it is the duty of everyone to rise up against the aggressor.

"We were blamed for Osama bin Laden because they said he was a terrorist and was taking shelter with us. But what is the fault of Iraq? Iraq has no Osama bin Laden in his country."