US aircraft attacked Taliban front lines yesterday where foreign aid workers estimate up to 300 fighters of the ruling Afghan militia have been wounded in the last week.
The opposition Northern Alliance reported another day of fierce fighting at front lines in the north of Afghanistan and said that despite the US bombing, the Taliban had recaptured some areas lost to the opposition only a day earlier.
Taliban officials reported gains on the ground near Aq Kupruk, 70 km south of the strategic northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif, near the border with Uzbekistan.
The US Defence Secretary, Mr Donald Rumsfeld, said the Taliban was no longer working as a proper government but the militant networks it sheltered still posed a threat to global security.
As the US bombardment entered its fifth week, Afghan opposition commanders north of Kabul said they faced an enemy which had lost equipment but was still well supplied with men.
Mr Rumsfeld is in Pakistan as part of a four-day tour of countries in the region which have offered support to US military operations. Mr Rumsfeld said that despite calls for a bombing halt in the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan which starts around November 17th, Pakistani officials had agreed it was important to settle military objectives as soon as possible. The most senior US general warned yesterday it would take "a long, long time" to complete the campaign. "This is the most important assignment we've had in the military since World War II, in my mind," Gen Richard Myers, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, told NBC television.
"We know this conflict is going to take a long, long time. We're prepared for that . . . we're setting in for the long haul."
Gen Myers said the US had increased its presence on the ground in Afghanistan by placing more teams with opposition leaders.
Meanwhile, Arab politicians and the highest authority in Sunni Islam have rejected a call from bin Laden for Muslims to join in a "religious war" against the Christian West. "Bin Laden does not speak in the name of the Arabs and Muslims," Mr Amr Mussa of the Arab League said in Damascus, ahead of an Arab meeting.
The Egyptian Foreign Minister, Mr Ahmed Maher, said there was "a war between bin Laden and the world" in answer to a question on bin Laden's comments broadcast on Saturday by the Qatari-based satellite television channel Al-Jazeera. In the recording, bin Laden said: "It is fundamentally a question of a religious war . . . the peoples of the East being Muslims, and those of the West being Christians." He called on Muslims to "defend their religion and their brothers in Afghanistan" against the "crusade" being led by the US.
Bin Laden also attacked the United Nations, describing the UN secretary general, Mr Kofi Annan, as a "criminal" and branding those Arab leaders who dealt with the UN as "infidels".