Al-Qaeda and Taliban supporters in Afghanistan are reportedly distributing leaflets offering rewards of up to $100,000 for Westerners killed or captured.
The pamphlets, slipped under people's doors under cover of night, promise $50,000 for any Westerner delivered dead and $100,000 for those taken alive, according to claims from US Army officials.
The pamphlets, known as "shabnama" or "night letters" also threaten Afghans with violence if they support the coalition troops or the interim administration of Mr Hamid Karzai said US army spokeswoman, Major Iris Hurd.
She refused to display any of the pamphlets, but said coalition forces had some in hand. Nor would she elaborate on how the US army knows who wrote them or whether they contained any information about how the rewards were to be collected.
A set of pamphlets circulating last month among Afghan refugees in Pakistan and in Afghanistan denounced Mr Karzai's interim government as "traitors to Islam" and warned that those who fight alongside the US will someday "suffer the consequences."
Maj Hurd said some of the recent pamphlets include allegations that the US used chemical and biological weapons to kill thousands of people in last year's bombing campaign against the Taliban and the al-Qaeda terrorist network.
AP