Taliban troops in the north of Afghanistan around Mazar-e-Sharif and defending Kabul yesterday faced renewed waves of attacks from US bombers, including carpet-bombing of their positions by B52s, the Pentagon has confirmed.
Rear-Admiral John Stuffelbeem told journalists that the US was now concentrating the majority of its efforts on the 25th day of continuous bombing on such concentrations. Targets also included bunkers, tunnels and caves, as well as defensive positions.
Some 75 US planes were deployed on Tuesday in attacks on 20 targets.
The admiral said that Taliban communications and supply lines had been severely degraded, placing considerable stress on their capabilities.
US planes also struck the Taliban-controlled city of Kandahar in south-eastern Afghanistan in a pre-dawn strike yesterday which was reported to have killed up to 13 people at a Red Crescent clinic.
In Islamabad, the Taliban claimed that 1,500 people had been killed since the US raids began on October 7th. The US says that the casualty figures have been exaggerated.
The intensified attacks have followed calls for the US to hit the Taliban harder to clear the way for an offensive towards Kabul by opposition forces.
Mr Ahmad Zia Masood, brother of the assassinated northern leader, Ahmad Shah Masood, said that he hoped an offensive would start within five days.
Meanwhile, the Taliban leadership yesterday claimed to have rejected contacts with the UN special envoy on Afghanistan, Mr Lakhdar Brahimi, accusing the organisation of being a "tool" of the United States.
The Taliban said that they refused the meeting, but a UN spokesman said that a meeting between Mr Brahimi and the Taliban ambassador to Islamabad, Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, did not take place because the UN envoy had "no time" to meet the ambassador after an earlier meeting with the Pakistani President, Gen Perez Musharraf.
In Afghanistan, there were reports that broadcast music had been heard for the first time since 1994. The Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press news agency reported from Kandahar that US forces had "hijacked" Taliban radio frequencies. The broadcasts reportedly included warnings to people to keep away from the Taliban and exhortations to militiamen to defect or "risk death".
Meanwhile, the US Secretary of Defence, Mr Donald Rumsfeld, is due to travel to Moscow tomorrow. He is also expected to visit a number of Central Asian republics.
