With Afghanistan's Taliban finished in all but name, mystery surrounded the whereabouts today of its spiritual leader Mullah Mohammad Omar and the man he swore to protect, Saudi-born fugitive Osama bin Laden.
The Taliban abandoned their last major stronghold of Kandahar yesterday, but Mullah Omar went to ground amid violence and confusion - with some soldiers of the rigid Islamist movement keeping their weapons and trying to break out of the city.
General Tommy Franks, commanding the US campaign, said air and ground forces were attacking those trying to escape, but he was not sure if Mullah Omar had slipped through the net.
"We simply don't know where Omar is, but that does not lead me to believe he has vanished," he said in Florida.
Anti-Taliban forces, meanwhile, said they had advanced on a separate mountain hideout of bin Laden, wanted dead or alive by the US which accuses him of masterminding the September 11 hijack attacks on New York and Washington which killed nearly 4,000 people.
But the US-backed forces have so far found no trace of the Saudi-born multimillionaire in a warren of caves in the Tora Bora area. US commanders believe he is still in Afghanistan, but others suggest he may have crossed the Pakistani border.
"To the best of our knowledge, he remains in Afghanistan," State Department Policy Planning Director Richard Haass said.
Franks said Tora Bora was not completely in the hands of anti-Taliban forces. "There certainly is movement by opposition forces in the Tora Bora area, but that area is by no means completely secured and searched," he said.
The fall of Kandahar came on the 60th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor - a date remembered in the U.S. as "a day of infamy" and which brought the United States into the World War Two.
"Now, another date will forever stand alongside December 7 - September 11, 2001," President Bush said in a proclamation.
"On that day, our people and our way of life again were brutally and suddenly attacked, though not by a complex military maneuver but by the surreptitious wiles of evil terrorists," he said.
Later, Mr Bush traveled to the naval base of Norfolk, Virginia, and spoke on the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise. Joined by seven survivors of the Japanese attack, he called again for victory in his war on terrorists, who he said were the heirs of fascism.
"We're fighting to win, and win we will," he said.
Mr Bush said leaders of the Taliban and bin Laden's network, al Qaeda, were now reduced to controlling a few caves and would be hunted down one by one.
US Marines on patrol from a desert airstrip in Kandahar province killed seven "enemy forces" overnight in their first ground attack since they seized the base almost two weeks ago.
"Last evening we successfully engaged enemy forces along road networks near Kandahar, killing seven and destroying three vehicles," Marine Captain David Romley told reporters, adding that there were no US casualties.