BOSTON/KABUL (Reuters) - A man who allegedly tried to blow up a trans-Atlantic plane with explosives packed in his shoes was ordered held in jail in Boston Monday, as U.S. warplanes resumed airstrikes in Afghanistan.
B-52 heavy bombers attacked caves and ammunition dumps north of Kandahar, using precision-guided munitions in the drive against Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network, defense officials said.
''They did multiple strikes,'' said Air Force Lt. Col. Ken McClellan, a Pentagon spokesman, describing the first bombing raids after a lull of several days.
A U.S. defense official also said U.S. and allied troops were preparing a new push into caves and tunnels to hunt for bin Laden.
Meanwhile, officials in Britain, France and the United States were trying to determine how a man, identified in U.S. court papers as British passport-holder Richard Reid, 28, got aboard an American Airlines flight bound for Miami in Paris on Saturday with wires sticking out of his shoes. He was subdued by flight attendants and passengers allegedly while trying to ignite the explosives.
Reid appeared in front of U.S. Magistrate Judge Judith Dein, sitting alone and dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit and sandals. When she asked if he understood the charge - intimidation or assault of a flight crew - he answered, ''Yeah.''
Reid, 28, requested a court-appointed attorney and was ordered held pending a bail hearing Friday. If convicted, he could be sentenced to 20 years in prison. The FBI said more charges are likely.
One key question, as yet unanswered, was whether Reid acted alone or was connected to a group, and especially whether he had links to bin Laden's al Qaeda network, accused of carrying out the Sept. 11 hijack attacks on New York and Washington that killed about 3,000 people.
In Islamabad, Kenton Keith, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition, said ''it's quite possible'' the Saudi-born bin Laden was killed in recent bombing. But the defense official in Washington said: ''The hunt continues.''
Reid is charged with interfering with flight attendants and faces a maximum prison term of 20 years. So far, he has not been linked to any wider plot or network.
In Afghanistan, new leader Hamid Karzai met a survivor of a convoy from which some 60 people were killed in a U.S. airstrike last week, lending credibility to local people's claims that the attack was a terrible mistake by the U.S. military.
Karzai said he was investigating the incident. He also made an important move toward conciliation in his wartorn country by appointing a powerful potential foe as deputy defense minister.
Karzai's spokesman said the Afghan leader had listened to a survivor describe how U.S. warplanes bombed a convoy of vehicles carrying elders of Pashtun tribes in eastern Afghanistan to attend his own inauguration on Saturday.
The fact that Karzai chose to meet a survivor suggested the convoy contained his supporters rather than Taliban or al Qaeda members, as the Pentagon has insisted.
Karzai's spokesman added his voice to speculation that the convoy might have been deliberately misidentified to the Americans by a local group hostile to the elders.
''Rivalries among the various tribes may have led to the incident,'' he said.
Local Pashtun chieftain Gulabdin said Karzai would face an armed uprising if there were more such U.S. attacks.
Also in Afghanistan, U.S. commandos took former deputy intelligence minister Abdul Haq Waseeq prisoner after being helicoptered into central Ghazni province to surround the house where the senior Taliban official had been staying.
Shooting broke out at a hospital in Kandahar, the former Taliban stronghold, when Afghan fighters backed by U.S. soldiers tried unsuccessfully to flush out eight wounded al Qaeda members holed up inside with grenades, witnesses said.
Pakistani intelligence service agents raided religious seminaries in its southwestern border town of Chaman, hunting former Taliban defense minister Mullah Abdul Razzaq.
The Pakistani central bank told banks to freeze the accounts of two groups accused by the United States of supporting terrorism, including one India blames for an attack on its parliament which killed 14.
Karzai's ministers, whose authority barely extends beyond Kabul as yet, started their first day of work at offices gutted by war and looting and run down by years of Taliban rule, when Muslim prayers took precedence over policy.
Civil servants have not been paid for months.
Karzai said he had appointed as deputy defense minister the Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, a potential foe. Defense Minister Mohammad Fahim described the appointment as marking the start of the establishment of a national army.
''I am very glad,'' said Dostum, who earlier threatened to boycott the new administration but later relented.
Helping to kick-start the new government, the United Nations sent 30 office kits for each ministry. Each contains a computer, chair and other equipment, down to the paper clips.
A U.N.-mandated security force will help with this task but one military source said it could be up to four weeks before the bulk of the contingent was in place. Royal Marines from Britain, which is leading the security force, patrolled Kabul.
Indian police said they had smashed a group suspected to be linked to the Islamist al Qaeda which was planning to kill Americans and Israelis in India and attack key installations.
The shaky transitional government of Somalia signed a deal with some opposition factions in which they promised ''to renounce violence as a means of settling political differences and to ensure cooperation with the international community in the eradication of terrorism.''
Several warlords, however, rejected the deal.
Chaotic Somalia is identified by the United States as a haven for al Qaeda and other militant groups, and is anxious not become the next target of U.S. military action.
