The US bombing campaign on Afghanistan entered its fourth week today with a rapidly rising toll among civilians and swelling anger among tribesmen in neighbouring Pakistan eager to fight alongside the ruling Taliban.
The tribesmen are said to include many from the same ethnic Pashtun group.
A band of some 10,000 armed men yesterday took over the isolated air force strip of Chilas in the North West Frontier Province bordering Afghanistan, aviation officials said.
It has been reported that a number have already entered Afghanistan to fight alongside the Taliban.
Pakistani Authorities said today thousands of armed men were still camped out waiting for a delegation of clerics to return from Afghanistan after negotiations with the Taliban on whether they need Pakistani volunteers.
However Afghanistan has no need of outside help and advised Pakistani mujahideen not to enter the country, the Taliban ambassador to Pakistan said today.
"We have requested that since there are only air assaults in Afghanistan there is no need and great danger for them being there", Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef told a news conference.
Meanwhile residents of the battered Afghan capital emerged from their flimsy mud-brick homes after the night-time curfew to buy naan bread, collect water and resume some kind of normal life after a quiet night in which planes roared overhead but did not drop their bombs on Kabul.
However, the southern city of Kandahar - stronghold of Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar - came under fierce attack through the night and into the dawn, CNN reported.
It has been reported that Taliban front lines on the border with Tajikstan have been bombed at the request of the Northern Alliance.
The US attacks were launched on October 7th to flush out Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden, the suspected mastermind behind the September 11th attacks.
But a series of US misshits have killed civilians and sparked concern among Islamic countries about the US raids, which look set to extend through the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan that starts in mid-November.
The night of quiet in Kabul followed a day in which a US bomb flattened a flimsy mudbrick home, blowing apart seven children as they ate breakfast with their father.
The blast shattered a neighbour's house, killing another two children in one of the most gruesome scenes of Washington's three-week-old bombing of the Afghan capital.
Two other civilians died when a bomb hit the minibus in which they were attempting to flee Kabul with their family.
US bombers killed a total of 12 civilians in the two early yesterday morning raids on the city.
Two civilians were also killed when US planes mistakenly bombed the tiny hamlet of Ghanikhel north of Kabul in territory controlled by the opposition Northern Alliance on Saturday. The blast turned the mood in the village against the United States.