On the first day of Ramadan, Afghan opposition forces made a last-ditch attempt to force the Taliban militia's last beleaguered bastions to surrender, as the vanguard of a US-led coalition force deployed.
British commandos secured an air base north of the capital Kabul, ready for the arrival of thousands more troops, while a 60-strong advance party of French soldiers was to set off for the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif to bring in aid.
Canada has also made troops available to join the force, which defense officials said would have a mainly humanitarian role, and Turkey, Jordan and Indonesia could take part in a full UN-backed peacekeeping mission.
US and British troops are also involved in another task, the hunt for Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network of Islamic radicals, a mission which US leaders said had stepped up following the Taliban's fall from power.
A US defense official said late Thursday that the US-backed opposition Northern Alliance captured some senior al-Qaeda leaders, but not bin Laden, in what could be a valuable coup on the intelligence front.
"They are senior enough to provide some meaningful information," he said.
On Thursday, a spokeswoman for the Pentagon said US air raids had killed some al-Qaeda leaders, but not bin Laden, the Saudi extremist thought to be the mastermind behind the Sept. 11 attacks on US cities.
It was reported last night, that Mohammed Atef, one of the top leaders of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, has apparently been killed in a US air strike, a US official said .
Meanwhile opposition leaders were attempting to secure the surrender of the remaining Taliban strongholds: the besieged town of Kunduz in the north, and the militia's headquarters city of Kandahar in the south.
Thousands of Taliban, many of them hardline Arab and Pakistani volunteers linked to al-Qaeda, are thought to be holed up in Kunduz, which is surrounded by troops of the opposition Northern Alliance, the new masters of Kabul.
"There are talks going on for the Taliban surrender. Those who refuse will be killed," the Alliance's General Mohammad Daud said yesterday in nearby Taloqan.
The governor of Kunduz had called for a two-day grace period before the Northern Alliance attacks the city in order to evacuate citizens, said Daud.
"At the end of two days, we will attack. We want to enter Kunduz before winter," he added, saying fighting would not stop for yesterday's start of Ramadan.
Kandahar, the last great prize in the war against the Taliban, was surrounded by a loose coalition of Northern Alliance troops and local tribal leaders pushing for a negotiated surrender of the city.
The Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) agency reported heavy US bombing of Kandahar overnight that destroyed a foreign ministry building and a mosque.
Eleven civilians were killed and more than 25 injured, according to the agency, which gave no details on where the casualties occurred. The report could not be independently verified.
Anti-Taliban leader Hamid Karzai, who has been trying to convince the militia to surrender the city, said: "There is no report of any fighting in Kandahar this morning. The Taliban are still in control of Kandahar."
Speaking from Uruzgan Province not far from Kandahar, he said a delegation from the Northern Alliance and former king Mohammed Zahir Shah had left the Pakistani city of Quetta to go to Kandahar to meet Taliban officials.
Kandahar is the headquarters of the Taliban's supreme commander Mullah Mohammad Omar, who Thursday defiantly rejected any Taliban participation in a proposed broad-based government in Kabul.
Bin Laden struck an equally defiant tone, saying he would choose death over capture.
"Osama has decided that death is better than being handed over to the Americans," the AIP quoted Taliban spokesman Mullah Abdullah as saying.
British officials said the 100 strong party of Royal Marines that arrived Thursday at Bagram airfield 16km northeast of Kabul would secure the base for the arrival of thousands more crack troops to enforce stability and distribute aid.
This force would be separate from the SAS special forces and Royal Marines already assigned to assist the US-led mission to capture bin Laden, which have a combat role, but British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw refused to rule out their use in any unanticipated conflicts.
Straw said their role "is to secure Bagram airport and make it safe for humanitarian and diplomatic missions, among other things."
The French defense ministry said the 60-strong party heading for Mazar was "part of a coalition operation, notably with the United States," to "secure access and distribution of humanitarian aid for Afghan refugees."
But French leaders in earlier statements, have vowed to assist in the war against terrorism
The first French detachment will be helicoptered into Mazar-i-Sharif by US troops from neighboring Uzbekistan, defense ministry spokesman Jean-Francois Bureau said yesterday.
Turkey said yesterday it would only contribute troops to a peacekeeping mission if it was given a role in efforts to set-up a peaceful post-Taliban government. News reports this week said that Ankara has 3,000 troops on standby.
Meanwhile, diplomatic efforts intensified to establish a multi-ethnic representative government in Kabul, amid growing concern over the Northern Alliance's apparent ambivalence to power-sharing proposals.
Factions in the Northern Alliance have already split the capital along ethnic lines -- a sign Kabul could be reverting to the patchwork divisions that sparked civil war after the expulsion of Soviet forces.
The power struggles sparked almost daily rocket attacks in the city and killed some 50,000 Kabul residents.
In the US, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his wife Lyudmila walked amid the still-smouldering rubble of one Sept. 11 target, New York's World Trade Center, on Thursday after three days of talks with Bush at his Texas ranch.
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