The Taliban's last Afghanistan bastion of Kandahar came under its heaviest bombing yet from US warplanes yesterday as anti-Taliban forces were reported to have inched closer to the city.
With the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, calling on thousands of his troops to fight to the death, fears were raised of the prospect of bloody street battles in the ancient city.
A US commander said yesterday the bombing of Kandahar was some of the fiercest since the war began.
"US planes are hitting all suspected sites of the Taliban and al-Qaeda in and around the city," he said.
The Pentagon said some 1,000 US Marines were now at a desert airfield not far from Kandahar, but there was no sign yet they were preparing for a ground assault on the Taliban heartland.
A spokesman for Mr Gul Agha, the former mujahideen governor of Kandahar, said he had about 3,000 fighters massed four miles south of Kandahar airport, but said there were no immediate plans to advance.
Northern Alliance troops should stay away, he said.
The US moved a step closer to capturing Osama bin Laden yesterday with confirmation that a leading member of his al-Qaeda network had been captured by anti-Taliban forces.
Mr Kenton Keith, a spokesman for the US-led coalition in Islamabad, confirmed that Northern Alliance troops had captured Mr Ahmed Omar Abdel-Rahman and he would be handed over to coalition authorities "shortly".
It was the first confirmed arrest of a top al-Qaeda member since September 11th.
Mr Keith said US authorities wanted to question Mr Rahman but he could provide no details about the circumstances of his arrest nor where he was being held.
In Cairo, his family, protesting his innocence, said Mr Rahman, (35) had been seized by the Northern Alliance in Kabul in mid-November.
Mr Rahman is the son of the Muslim cleric Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, who with nine other militant Muslims was convicted on charges stemming from a deadly 1993 car-bombing of the World Trade Centre.
In a possible reference to the reported handover, the US Defence Secretary, Mr Donald Rumsfeld, said in Washington the US was seeking "physical custody" of all Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders after questioning, to avoid their release to other countries.
"Let there be no doubt we would want each single senior Taliban leader, we would want al-Qaeda people not to be set free, not released in another country," Mr Rumsfeld told reporters during a Pentagon briefing. "If there are people, we believe we want to actually have physical custody over them."
Meanwhile, UN and donor countries are offering billions of dollars if various groups in Afghanistan can bury their ancient differences and set up interim bodies to administer the aid.
Mr Mark Malloch Brown, who is leading the UN's efforts to rebuild Afghanistan, said only a long-term commitment to rebuilding the shattered country would prevent it remaining a potential haven for terrorists.
He warned the US that the "hard part starts now".
Already US military commanders have halted the deployment of peacekeepers in areas of Afghanistan freed from Taliban control due to concerns they could hinder US military operations.
But the Kabul-based Northern Alliance leader, Mr Burhanuddin Rabbani, said yesterday only around 200 peacekeepers were needed and elections should be held within two months, not two years as envisaged at the Bonn talks.