Civilians killed as airstrikes hit homes

And planes struck a small town outside the southern city where the Taliban’s supreme leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, had preached two days before.

With the air campaign in its 12th day came the first report that the bombing had killed a veteran figure in Osama bin Laden’s al Qaida network.

A London-based Islamic group said an Egyptian who was a veteran al Qaida fighter died in a US strike on Sunday.

Alongside missiles and bombs, US forces have been bombarding Afghanistan with radio broadcasts and leaflets urging surrender. US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said at the Pentagon that those operations had borne some fruit, with some Taliban members defecting to the opposition.

In London, Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair suggested coalition ground operations may be on the horizon, and that the international effort was entering ’’the most testing time’’.

Speaking at Downing Street, Tony Blair offered no time frame or details, but he said: ‘‘I don’t think we have ever contemplated this being done by air power alone.

’’I believe that the next few weeks will be the most testing time, but we are on track to achieve the goals we set out.

’’There will be further action that we are considering taking, again targeted.’’

Strikes on the Afghan capital Kabul yesterday appeared to be targeted against a Taliban tank unit and other military installations near the city centre.

However, one bomb devastated two homes in the Quilazaman Khan neighbourhood, killing four family members, according to neighbours.

A 16-year-old girl was also killed when another bomb exploded in the Microryan housing complex about a half mile away, residents said.

Late last night, two strong detonations shook buildings in the once-fashionable Wazir Akbar Khan neighbourhood.

There was no immediate confirmation of the number of deaths. The United States has expressed regret for civilian casualties, insisting that it only targets bin Laden and his Taliban allies.

Taliban officials said at least 12 people were killed and 20 injured during the day of strikes on Kandahar - a claim that could not be independently verified.

Planes also targeted Arghandab, a small town about 12 miles to the north-west, witnesses said.

Taliban sources claimed there were no military targets there, but Mullah Omar preached there on Tuesday.

US President George Bush ordered the attacks beginning October 7 to uproot bin Laden and his al Qaida network - blamed for the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States - and punish Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban, which has harboured him.

In other developments:

:: A Taliban spokesman claimed between 600 and 900 people had been killed in the US-led air assault. Rumsfeld called the casualty figures false and self-serving.

:: Afghan opposition fighters pushing toward the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif battled Taliban forces at the airport, said Ibrahim Ghafoori, an opposition alliance official in Uzbekistan. The Iranian news agency reported the northern alliance foreign minister met with his Iranian counterpart in Tehran to talk about Afghanistan and aid to civilians caught in the fighting.

:: American special operations troops are in position aboard the USS Kitty Hawk aircraft carrier in the Indian Ocean, ready for helicopter-borne missions in Afghanistan, military officials say.

:: Defence officials said an unmanned American spy plane armed with missiles, the low-flying RQ-1 Predator, has been used for the first time in combat missions over Afghanistan.

:: Four Osama bin Laden followers convicted in the 1998 bombings of two US embassies in Africa were sentenced to life without parole by a New York City court.

:: CNN reported an office used by its contract workers in Kandahar was damaged in a US attack yesterday. The network said two CNN employees took cover in the building and were not injured during the attack on a vehicle on a nearby road.

The death of the veteran al-Qaida fighter, known as Abu Baseer al-Masri, was reported by the London-based Islamic Observation Centre. The report said that a US strike near Jalalabad on Sunday killed al-Masri and injured two of his colleagues.

Afghan sources in Islamabad, Pakistan, said al-Masri had been in Afghanistan for about 10 years and was close to bin Laden’s chief lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahri.

Still, both bin Laden and Mullah Omar were alive, said the Taliban ambassador to neighbouring Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef. He said he had met recently with bin Laden and ‘‘he is fine’’.

Rejecting reports of Taliban defections, Zaeef told reporters in the Pakistani border town Chaman that Taliban morale was high. ‘‘Until there is one Talib alive in Afghanistan, America cannot defeat us,’’ he said. ’’Our morale are high and we will never bow to unjust demands of any power.’’

Behind opposition lines about 40 miles north of Kabul, the Afghan opposition alliance presented what it said were 10 Taliban defectors to foreign reporters. They claimed morale among Taliban fighters was low.

’’They say their morale is high but it isn’t. Fighters are running away to Pakistan or Iran, or joining the (Northern Alliance),’’ said 30-year-old Abdul Ghafur, who defected four days ago and who held a machine gun in his hands as he spoke.

In Islamabad, Pakistan, aid groups complained that looting by the Taliban and other armed bands was hampering desperately needed relief operations for Afghan civilians.

Medecins sans Frontieres shut down medical operations in Kandahar and Mazar-e-Sharif on Thursday after its offices there were sacked.

The programmes together had helped treat the ill and feed children in six Afghan provinces, according to a spokesman for the group, Morten Rostrup.

In Kabul, Taliban officials returned one of two UN World Food Programme grain warehouses that had been commandeered earlier in the week at gunpoint but there was no word on the warehouse still in Taliban hands.