US and Afghan forces scoured Afghanistan's eastern highlands for Osama bin Laden and his fleeing al-Qaeda fighters today, while final preparations were under way in Kabul to install an interim government.
After pounding Tora Bora overnight, US warplanes over eastern Afghanistan switched their targets to areas closer to the Afghan border, presumably to strike at fleeing fighters loyal to bin Laden.
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Afghan children walk past anti-Taliban Afghan fighters guarding prisoners in a compound in Tora Bora. Photograph: Reuters
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Friendly fire wounded several Afghan fighters, but there was still no sign of the Saudi-born dissident alleged to be the mastermind of the September 11th terror attacks against the US.
"Our assumption is that he is still in Afghanistan," British Prime Minister Mr Tony Blair's spokesman said in London. "The hunt goes on."
But Pentagon spokesman Mr Richard McGraw said the whereabouts of bin Laden and his erstwhile protector, Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, remain unknown.
He added, however: "The action continues today. We continue bombing."
Mr McGraw also said the US military was holding five prisoners, including western al Qaeda fighters, Mr John Walker, an American, and Mr David Hicks, an Australian, aboard the USS Peleliu in the Indian Ocean.
In Agam village, north of Tora Bora, hundreds of locals turned out to see 19 bedraggled al-Qaeda prisoners - 10 of them foreigners, mostly Arabs - paraded before them and a contingent of international media.
In Kabul, the groundwork was being laid for the installation on Saturday of an new interim administration, with two embassies reopened and news that the first troops of a UN peacekeeping force would begin arriving this week.
The leader of the new UN-backed regime, the Pashtun royalist Mr Hamid Karzai, left for Rome via London for talks with exiled former king Mohammed Zahir Shah, a major figurehead in the bid to unite rival Afghan factions.
Muffled explosions were heard further south, near the border with Pakistan, possibly from bombing directed at fleeing al-Qaeda forces.
But US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld disputed the view that al-Qaeda was finished in Afghanistan, saying it will take time to root out fighters resisting in the mountains.
"The first rule of war is that presidents decide when something has been achieved," he told reporters on his way to Brussels for a meeting of NATO defence ministers.
AFP