The UN has confirmed that a military hospital was destroyed in the western Afghan city of Herat on Monday. The announcement came as the US admitted that it had stepped up its bombing campaign on the Taliban frontline north of Kabul.
The Taliban had alleged that US and British planes had bombed a hospital in Herat and that "more than 100 people are reported to have been martyred - they were patients, doctors, nurses and other staff who were present there".
Meanwhile, a US warplane inadvertently dropped a 1,000lb bomb in a field near a home for the elderly, a Pentagon spokeswoman, Ms Victoria Clarke, said yesterday.
"At 9:05 Sunday a US navy FA-18 Hornet missed its intended target and inadvertently dropped a 1,000lb bomb in an open field, an open area near a senior citizens home outside Herat, Afghanistan," she said at a briefing.
Ms Clarke said the intended target was a vehicle storage facility at the Herat army barracks, some 91 metres from the facility. "We regret any loss of civilian life," she said.
US jets yesterday pounded the Taliban's frontline near Kabul for a third day. The latest attacks came in the afternoon when two jets appeared in the sky over the north of the city and circled the front between the Taliban and their Northern Alliance enemy.
Having identified their targets, the planes swooped into their bombing run, banking steeply. The jets then levelled out and fired their missiles amid the boom of Taliban anti-aircraft fire.
There were five explosions during the 20-minute raid. Black smoke +billowed along the horizon, accompanied by delayed rumbles from the blasts.
US defence officials said for the first time the air strikes were targeting Taliban troops protecting Kabul and Mazar-e-Sharif, the northern city which commands a strategic east/west highway and is the key supply link to Kabul.
The Taliban said the opposition had tried to advance but had been repelled. The Taliban ambassador to Pakistan said Osama bin Laden and the Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, were alive.
Meanwhile, there were more reports of civilian casualties from the air strikes.
The Afghan Islamic Press claimed bombs hit several tankers carrying oil to the southern Afghan city of Kandahar yesterday, killing five people and wounding 10.
The Taliban claimed that air raids overnight killed more than 40 people near Kabul and Herat. They said that in Qalaye Shatir in Herat 18 bombs were dropped, killing 15 and wounding 25 more in houses and at a mosque.
They said 25 were also killed when bombs hit Darul Aman to the south of Kabul, and the air strikes also hit Taliban positions.
Meanwhile, baton-wielding police yesterday beat back protesters demonstrating against the US military presence in Pakistan, injuring 14 and arresting 100.
The protesters from the right-wing Jamaat-e-Islami party clashed with police after evading security in Jacobabad in the southern Sindh province where the US military is using an air base to provide support for its attacks.
Meanwhile Washington authorities confirmed yesterday that two postal workers have died from anthrax. "Those two deaths were confirmed as anthrax deaths," said Doctor Ivan Walks, the chief health official for the District of Columbia.
He added that two other postal workers at the same Brentwood mail sorting facility infected with inhalation anthrax remained in critical condition
A postal worker at a New Jersey facility which processed anthrax-laden letters sent to Congress and two New York media companies became the state's first case of suspected inhalation anthrax yesterday. The woman, who is in a stable condition, works at the mail processing centre near Trenton where another worker was found to have skin anthrax last week and another similar case is suspected.