Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar ordered his beleaguered militia today to stand and fight, Taliban sources said, as US troops and tribal armies closed in on their last strongholds.
"Don't vacate any areas," Mullah Omar was quoted as saying in a radio message to Taliban forces hemmed in to a shrinking area of southern Afghanistan after more than seven weeks of US bombing and ground attacks by their Afghan opponents.
Hundreds of US Marines have landed at a desert airstrip southwest of Kandahar ready for a push towards the ancient walled city and the jagged hills where Osama bin Laden, chief suspect for the September 11th hijack attacks, is believed to be hiding.
US Defense Secretary Mr Donald Rumsfeld said a compound used by leaders of the Taliban and bin Laden's al Qaeda network was bombed yesterday. "Whoever was there is going to wish they weren't," he said.
In Islamabad, a spokesman for the former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, said Mullah Omar was still alive. The Taliban have repeatedly said bin Laden is not in territory under their control.
Mr Rumsfeld said US troops would soon begin systematically searching for the Saudi-born militant and his cohorts on the ground and in their network of underground tunnels and caves.
"We will pursue them until they have nowhere else to run," Mr Rumsfeld said. Many Pakistani, Arab and Chechen fighters linked to al Qaeda are believed to have fallen back towards Kandahar when the Taliban retreated from Kabul on November 13th.
Kandahar residents fear Omar will make a defiant last stand in the city. Battle-hungry Taliban troops fear he will not. "Finally we will have something to shoot at," said one Taliban fighter in the city.