US-led allied forces yesterday prowled the rugged mountains of eastern Afghanistan for al-Qaeda fighters who may have escaped the aerial barrage.
But Afghan commanders said many of the al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters - including their commander Saif Rahman Mansour - got away before Afghan forces overran three villages and a commanding ridgeline.
Pentagon officials had repeatedly said the only choice facing the enemy troops was "surrender or die", although Afghan commanders said they were prepared to allow them to escape.
Leading the final assault were Afghan commanders Zia Lodin and Gul Haider, who floated the idea of a negotiated exit to spare further bloodshed.
"They're trying to slip away," one Afghan commander, Mohammed Qasim, said of the al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters.
Another commander, Naeem, said a captured Taliban fighter told him there were about 14 Arab commanders and about 250 Chechens around Shah-e-Kot, one of the three villages, when the Americans attacked but many Afghans deserted after quarrels with the Arabs.
In Moscow, the Afghan interim leader, Mr Hamid Karzai, downplayed Russia's role in the international effort to rebuild Afghanistan, a country ravaged by the Soviet Union in its 10-year occupation in the 1980s.
Barely a day after he won pledges of Russian aid to reconstruct his country, Mr Karzai, an ethnic Pashtun who, contrary to many of his ministers, is not a member of the Moscow-backed Northern Alliance, showed only measured gratitude on the final day of his visit.
He was also careful not to overemphasize the importance of the military aid which Moscow has been keen to offer him - (AP, AFP).