US aircraft pounded Taliban troops dug in at the airport of their last stronghold today, while ethnic Pashtun tribal leaders told the Northern Alliance to steer clear of south Afghanistan.
Afghanistan's Pashtuns, the war-torn country's largest tribe, are besieging the Taliban in their remaining southern outposts, while the first US ground troops, about 1,000 marines, have taken over a desert airstrip within striking distance of Kandahar.
Mr Khalid Pashtoon, a spokesman for former Kandahar mujahideen governor Mr Gul Agha, said Mr Agha's army of 3,000 fighters was massed six kilometres south of the airport but had no immediate plans to advance further.
"The situation right now is quite quiet and calm. Bombing is going on right now, but there is no fighting," Mr Pashtoon told Reutersby satellite telephone.
Mullah Mohammad Omar's fundamentalist Taliban has been driven back to Kandahar and a few surrounding provinces after seven weeks of intense US air strikes and swift advances by the ethnic minority Tajik- and Uzbek-dominated Northern Alliance.
In less than three weeks, the Northern Alliance has swept the Taliban out of northern Afghanistan and from the capital, Kabul.
Underlining the mistrust between the Pashtuns and the ethnic minority Northern Alliance after more than two decades of Soviet occupation, civil war and Taliban rule, Mr Pashtoon issued a warning to the Northern Alliance not to advance south from Kabul.
He described reports that Northern Alliance forces had entered Kandahar province as a bluff. "The Northern Alliance are always bluffing on this kind of stuff and we don't like that," he said.
"If they are marching to Kandahar, then it must be in their dreams. We have enough people here in Kandahar and we don't need their help. If we want their help, we'll ask for it. We don't want anybody from any other province here," he said.
The Pashtuns, from whom the Taliban drew most of their support but who now largely back the return of exiled king Zahir Shah, were furious when the Northern Alliance marched into Kabul despite pleas from the international community to hold off.
Doctor A.B. Haqqani, a Pakistani who runs clinics for women and children in Kandahar, said the Taliban's hold over the people of the city was breaking down.
The people are sure the Taliban won't be there [long] and their trust in the Taliban is going, Mr Haqqani told Reutersafter speaking to his staff in Kandahar last night.