A day of protest against the US air strikes is due to take place today in neighbouring Pakistan, as Northern Alliance forces close in on the strategically important city of Mazar-e-Sharif in northern Afghanistan.
Backed by US warplanes and special forces, and mixing tanks with horseback warriors, the Northern Alliance said it was closing in on the provincial capital after a series of breakthroughs on Tuesday and Wednesday.
After claiming to have moved as near as 7 km on Wednesday, the alliance dug in at the village of Chishma-e-Shifa, about 22 km south of Mazar-e-Sharif, a spokesman said
The size and intensity of anti-war demonstrations in Pakistan has waned in recent weeks and the President, Gen Pervez Musharraf, has placed key opposition clerics and religious leaders in detention.
The US has indicated it will continue its campaign during Ramadan, a month of dawn to dusk fasting for Muslims. Gen Musharraf's support for Washington has won him strong backing from Western countries in his efforts to reschedule some of Pakistan's national debt of about £30 billion.
Gen Musharraf met the French Prime Minister, Mr Jacques Chirac, and the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, yesterday on his way to address the UN General Assembly in New York.
Pakistan's Foreign Ministry has ordered its former ally, Afghanistan's ruling Taliban, to close its consulate in the port city of Karachi by the end of this week.
Karachi, the major Pakistani commercial and banking centre, is also a centre of Islamic fundamentalist activity and the scene of the largest protests against the US bombing campaign.
The Taliban has an embassy in the Pakistan capital, Islamabad, and consulates in Quetta and Peshawar. The Taliban ambassador in Islamabad, Mr Abdul Salam Zaeef, has also been told to stop his press conferences in which he has condemned the United States and its partners for the bombing campaign.
Meanwhile, the relief agency Concern in Pakistan has said it expects refugees housed in a staging camp near the Afghan border will start moving to a longer-term camp currently under construction.
This follows the Pakistan government's decision this week to allow the internal transfer of up to 2,800 residents from the Killi Faizo staging camp near Chaman in the southerly Baluchistan Province.
Pakistan's borders with Afghanistan remain officially closed, with only vulnerable women, children, elderly and sick people allowed to enter the state.
However, the UNHCR estimates that about 135,000 people have fled Afghanistan to date, with many entering Pakistan illegally along its highly-porous 1,400-mile-long border.