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Attack from sky resumes

Afghans had a brief respite from US-led air raids before bombing runs resumed yesterday as enraged Taliban authorities searched for more bodies in the rubble of a remote village flattened by a direct strike.

US warplanes bombed Kabul's airport early yesterday and CNN reported the Taliban's southern stronghold of Kandahar was under attack after a lull of nearly 24 hours out of what Washington said was deference to the Muslim holy day.

At least one civilian was killed and four injured near Kabul airport when a bomb landed near a poor residential area. Six houses near the strike site were flattened by the blast.

The death toll pushed past the 300 mark -- with more than half from a single village near Jalalabad -- on the sixth day of the US-led assaults, Taliban officials said.

The air raids are aimed at flushing out Saudi-born fugitive Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network, blamed for last month's devastating attacks on New York and Washington.

The US says the initial phase of the operation was aimed at eliminating air defenses of Afghanistan's Taliban rulers, who have given sanctuary to bin Laden since 1996.

Exhausted residents of the capital were woken yesterday by at least eight huge explosions, with one strike apparently hitting the airport, which has been the main target.

"From my house I could see a bomb land on the airport, I saw a fireball, debris flying up into the sky and the initial big fire then dimming," one witness said.

Residents said the response by the Taliban's anti-aircraft fire had appeared sluggish and light, suggesting the strikes may have hit the country's rudimentary radar facilities and be hindering gun batteries.

Strong shockwaves

"The shockwaves of the bombs were quite severe but there was less anti-aircraft fire seen in the sky compared to other nights," one said.

On Friday, angry Muslim clerics vented their rage against the air onslaught during prayers across the country, urging Afghans to fight to the last breath and decreeing death to anyone who assisted the US.

"Jihad [holy war] is now a must for every Muslim, and every Afghan who helps America should be killed," raged one at a mosque in the eastern city of Jalalabad, the Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) reported.

"America can destroy our country but not our faith and our principles, we will fight till the last breath," AIP quoted another cleric as saying in a sermon in the southern city of Kandahar.

Much of the rage had been fuelled by a deadly strike on the hillside village of Khorum near the eastern city of Jalalabad, where at least 160 bodies have already been pulled from the rubble of flattened houses.

"So far 160 bodies have been recovered and most of them were children and women," the Afghan Islamic Press quoted a Taliban official in the area as saying.

Officials said they feared up to 200 people may have been killed.

Jalalabad, long surrounded by militant training camps including some for bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, has seen particularly heavy bombardment.

Taliban officials have granted visas for a group of foreign journalists to see the Khorum damage for themselves, but they were stranded at the border city of Peshawar yesterday morning after Pakistani authorities refused them permission to cross.

Dozens killed in kandahar raids

Dozens more people were killed or injured and military bases hit in raids on southern Kandahar province, officials said.

"Tens of people have been killed and wounded in Arghandab district of Kandahar province during last night's raids," Abdul Hanan Himat said.

He said military bases had been hit, but gave no details.

In Washington, US officials said their forces were using B-52 and B-1 bombers and dropping deadly cluster bombs and giant so-called "bunker busters" in the attacks, as well as having launched dozens of cruise missiles.

Despite the ferocity of the raids, there was no sign the US was any closer to getting bin Laden -- who US President George W. Bush has said is wanted "dead or alive" -- or the Taliban's reclusive spiritual leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar.

One of Mullah Omar's houses was struck earlier this week, residents who have since fled to Pakistan said, apparently killing his 10-year-old son and his stepfather.

Under attack from outside, the Taliban said they did make some gains against their internal enemies after recapturing a western district from the opposition Northern Alliance.

Late yesterday, Afghanistan's ruling Taliban rejected US President George W. Bush's "second chance" offer to surrender terrorist suspect Osama bin Laden, the Afghan embassy in Islamabad said.

In the Pakistani capital, an official of the Afghan Embassy said "we have rejected the Bush offer." The official, speaking on the customary condition of anonymity, said Taliban authorities in Kandahar, southern Afghanistan, had informed their ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef, that the Bush offer would not be accepted.
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