Anti-Taliban forces are preparing to corner Mullah Mohammad Omar, the movement's shadowy leader thought to be hiding in southern Afghanistan.
The New Year began on a bitter note for a nation gutted by more than 20 years of war with yet another US air attack reported to have killed scores of civilians.
Afghans said US planes killed 107 people in attacks on an eastern village. A witness who went to Qalaye Niazi in Paktia district found pools of blood, scraps of flesh and clumps of human hair amid a dozen destroyed houses.
A US military spokesman said strikes by two B-1B bombers and a B-52 destroyed a compound used by Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda fighters and their Taliban allies.
Navy Lieutenant-Commander Matthew Klee said two surface-to-air missiles were fired at the planes. "You don't have a village launching surface-to-air missiles at aircraft. You have a known al Qaeda-Taliban leadership compound."
America's CIA, together with Saudi Arabian and Pakistani spy agencies, supplied arms to Afghan mujahideen fighting Soviet forces in the 1980s. The arms included Soviet Sam-7 and US Stinger shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles.
Anti-Soviet fighters included many foreign Muslims, including Saudi-born bin Laden, chief suspect in the September 11 suicide attacks on New York and Washington.
Since the United States began its bombing offensive in Afghanistan on October 7 there have been several reports of apparently mistaken attacks on civilians.
In the worst incident, witnesses said 60 civilians died when planes repeatedly attacked a convoy of tribal leaders heading to Kabul for the inauguration of the new interim government.
Local Afghan leaders and the country's interim defence minister, Mohammed Fahim, have called for an end to the US bombing campaign blamed for the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands, of Afghan civilians.
"Attacks must end"
"The attacks must end. The Americans must stop bombing," local tribal leader Haji Saifullah said.
None of the victims belonged either to the Taliban or al Qaeda, he said, adding that the village was hit because of "wrong information" from local rivals.
Both bin Laden and Omar have so far escaped the huge US-led effort to topple the Taliban and root out al Qaeda.
US officials say Omar might be hiding near Baghran, in southern Helmand district, about 160 km northwest of the Taliban's former stronghold of Kandahar.
The anti-Taliban intelligence chief in Kandahar said he had asked villagers in Helmand to hand Omar over.
"We have told them to give us Omar, but no ultimatum has been issued," Haji Gullalai said. "We have two goals: to disarm irresponsible people and to get Omar, who is a criminal for the Afghan people and the whole world."
He said he and tribal allies had assembled a force of up to 2,000 fighters and they were ready to try to capture the fugitive if he was not handed over.
The cleric who stamped his traditionalist version of Islam on Afghanistan fled Kandahar in December as his rule collapsed under the pressure of US air strikes.
US officials said Marines had started gathering intelligence outside the southern city of Kandahar, but the US Central Command said they were not actively hunting Mullah Omar.
One official said they were looking for clues at a spot thought to have been occupied by Taliban or Qaeda fighters.
Zacarias Moussaoui, the first al Qaeda suspect to be indicted on charges involving the September 11 attacks, is due in a US federal court in Alexandria, Virginia to enter a plea on charges of conspiring with bin Laden and others to murder thousands of people.
Around 3,200 people died in the September 11 attacks.
In Kabul, the Afghan administration and Britain initialled an agreement on deployment of about 4,500 foreign peacekeeping troops.
Iran denies al Qaeda contacts
A US soldier was wounded in the leg when gunmen opened fire on a convoy of special forces troops outside the eastern town of Jalalabad, US military officials said.
Iran denied a US press report of possible contacts with al Qaeda. "Iran's clear position on the phenomenon of terrorism, the Taliban and the Qaeda group indisputably proves that such claims and reports are baseless and false," said a Foreign Ministry spokesman.
The New York Times had reported that bin Laden emissaries had contacted Iranian agents in the mid-1990s to try to form an anti-US alliance.
In Texas, US President George W Bush said Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf was curbing militants who sought to harm India.
"He's cracking down hard and I appreciate his efforts," Bush said. "Terror is terror and the fact that the Pakistani president is after the terrorists is a good sign."
Pakistan said it had detained a founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba, one of two groups India blames for the December 13 suicide attack on its parliament. Fourteen people died.
India and Pakistan renewed a 10-year-old agreement under which both are committed not to attack each other's nuclear facilities, the Indian Foreign Ministry said.
© Reuters
World News Video
-
'King of Romance' competes in Eurovision (1:46)
-
Observers accuse both sides in Syria (0:26)
-
Man admits 'milk carton' murder (0:19)
