Afghanistan's Northern Alliance said today it suspended an assault on the besieged city of Kunduz to give the Taliban more time to surrender, but would resume attacks if no deal emerged by tomorrow afternoon.
Despite the pause in ground attacks, US warplanes kept up their aerial barrage, bombing Taliban targets around Kunduz on the 48th day of attacks on the fundamentalist militia to punish them for harbouring Saudi-born fugitive Osama bin Laden.
A Reuters television crew near Taloqan, east of Kunduz, saw American B-52s flying overhead and then heard bombs exploding in the direction of the city, sending plumes of smoke into the sky.
Northern Alliance Foreign Minister Mr Abdullah Abdullah said he hoped negotiations with the fighters in Kunduz, the Taliban's last northern bastion, would work, but the attack would go on if no deal materialised.
In the south, a Taliban official said their supreme leader, Mr Mullah Mohammad Omar, had fled his stronghold in the city of Kandahar for a more secure hideaway, leaving a deputy in his place.
"Mullah Omar has shifted to an unknown place for security reasons, Mullah Sayed Mohammad Haqqani," a Taliban security official in charge at the border town of Spin Boldak near Pakistan, said.
But the Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) later quoted Mullah Omar's spokesman as saying the report was false.
Confusion has shrouded surrender talks for some 15,000 Taliban fighters - including thousands of Pakistani, Arab and Chechen volunteers linked to bin Laden's al Qaeda network -mounting a bitter defence in Kunduz.
Ethnic Uzbek opposition warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostum said yesterday surrender terms had been agreed, but this was later thrown into doubt when Northern Alliance Interior Minister Mr Yunus Qanuni said the talks had failed and an assault on the city would be restarted.
Fears grew today Kunduz could become a bloodbath if the surrender talks foundered or if the thousands of al Qaeda troops fought to the death to avoid the risk of summary justice.
British Foreign Secretary Mr Jack Straw said Pakistani President Mr Pervez Musharraf expressed serious concern at a meeting in Islamabad about the fate of the Kunduz defenders.
Foreign fighters' fears of retribution will not have been allayed by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which said up to 600 bodies had been found in the city of Mazar-i-Sharif after its capture two weeks ago by the Alliance.
Using the latest spying and thermal imaging equipment, special US forces on the ground and reconnaissance aircraft are combing the hills of southern Afghanistan for bin Laden.
Other unmanned aircraft are firing missiles at caves and tunnels where the millionaire militant might be holed up.
Washington is hoping a different weapon in its arsenal will hit the target: it has offered rewards of up to 25 million for information leading to bin Laden and his top lieutenants.