THE Afghan Taliban militia captured a key air base and a town north of Kabul in a big offensive, yesterday.
Taliban sources said their fighters had seized Bagram air base and the town of Charikar, about 30 miles from the Afghan capital, in heavy fighting against forces loyal to ousted president Burhanuddin Rabbani.
But a spokesman for the ousted government's top military commander, Gen Ahmad Shah Masood, quoted by Iranian television, denied the fall of Bagram or any change of front lines there.
In Kabul, a Taliban interim government minister said the Islamic movement's leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, had made donations to the poor of the capital - and three other cities to celebrate yesterday's victory.
A spokesman at Taliban headquarters in the southern city of Kandahar said its forces had captured 500 opposition fighters.
A witness said he saw bodies of two opposition fighters on the roadside, their mouths stuffed with Afghani banknotes - a Taliban gesture to depict their foes as mercenaries.
Yesterday's battle followed three days of inconclusive UN-sponsored peace talks in Islamabad between the Taliban, which controls about two-thirds of Afghanistan, and its opponents.
The Islamic fundamentalist Taliban took Kabul last September.