US aircraft bombed eastern Afghan mountain hideouts of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda fighters today as a fresh deadline for their surrender came and went.
US bombers sent up huge plumes of smoke along a mountain ridge near the eastern village of Tora Bora.
The range of hills and valleys is home to networks of caves harbouring an unknown number of al-Qaeda fighters and possibly bin Laden, the man Washington blames for the September 11th attacks on the United States.
US planes have cornered the remnants of the movement in this barren region about 40 kilometres south of Jalalabad.
Surrender talks fell apart yesterday, and anti-Taliban fighters announced a new Thursday deadline that passed without any sign of gunmen coming down from the hills - suggesting the whole idea may have been a ruse.
"I heard an al-Qaeda fighter say on the radio they don't want to surrender," a spokesman for anti-Taliban commander Haji Zahir, told reporters. "They said 'we want martyrdom, we will succeed.' They won't accept . . . I tried to talk to them yesterday but they did not want to," he said.
Tribal leader Mr Hamid Karzai arrived in Bagram air base north of Kabul from Kandahar, where he had overseen the surrender of the late Taliban stronghold, a Northern Alliance spokesman said.
Mr Karzai is due to take up his post as head of the interim administration on December 22nd, under a UN-brokered accord signed by anti-Taliban leaders in Bonn.