Just days before the new interim government of Afghanistan is to take office, a new Taliban attack in the city of Kandahar has set nerves here on edge. It has also pointed out the instability of the country as it seeks to embark on a new course toward democracy.
Taliban fighters attacked a southern Afghan town near their former stronghold of Kandahar, illustrating the dangers facing a new administration due to take over in Kabul on Saturday.
With Osama bin Laden still on the run, eight FBI agents set about interrogating captured members of his al-Qaeda network at a newly- built detention centre at Kandahar airport.
Across the border in Pakistan, captured al-Qaeda fighters yesterday staged a bloody escape attempt. Pakistani government officials said 14 people were killed when the al-Qaeda fighters in the Kurram tribal agency near the Afghan frontier region of Tora Bora seized the weapons of their Pakistani army guards and opened fire.
The gun-battle sparked a huge manhunt, the army sealing off the rugged area while helicopters swept overhead seeking escaped prisoners.
Eight suspected al-Qaeda Arabs and six Pakistanis, including a bus driver, were killed in the clash which broke out as 156 prisoners were being taken to jail by bus.
Many of the prisoners tried to escape, said government spokesman Maj-Gen Rashid Qureshi. Some were rounded up and the rest had been surrounded.
In Afghanistan, remnants of Afghanistan's routed Taliban, bin Laden's protectors, attacked tribal fighters overnight at a town between Kandahar and the Pakistani border, reporters said.
A team of French journalists leaving Kandahar for Pakistan said they had been stopped by excited guards at a checkpoint before the town of Takhteh Pol.
The guards said there was fighting all night because the Taliban attacked. US planes had dropped food packets in the area, and that added to the confusion as residents scrambled to pick them up.
Twelve days after the Taliban surrendered Kandahar, birthplace of the hardline Islamist movement, the city appears to be under the control of the new city governor, Gul Agha.
But US and ethnic tribal Pashtun forces are still searching for scattered pockets of hardcore Taliban fighters loyal to bin Laden, the man Washington accuses of masterminding the September 11th suicide attacks on the United States.
Gul Agha said on Tuesday he was preparing to launch an operation against Taliban forces who had not surrendered.
Meanwhile, a British-led multinational security force should start deploying in the Afghan capital by the weekend.
Many details of the deployment , including the precise role and ultimate size of the force, still had to be worked out in talks with defence minister designate, Mr Mohammad Fahim, military chief of the Northern Alliance.
Mr Fahim has begun on an almost daily basis to issue statements concerning the deployment that are at variance with the comments of incoming president Hamid Karzai.
Many observers here are concerned that Mr Fahima's comments might be indicative of a rupture in the fragile coalition government.
Mr Fahim has said that the force's tasks were expected to be restricted largely to guarding government meetings in Kabul and conducting low-key patrols on foot and in vehicles around the city.
Mr Karzai said that the force for Kabul could number up to 5,000. Mr Fahim last week had said the force for Kabul should number only 1,000 and restrict itself to guarding ministers.