Panic is gripping the Taliban's stronghold of Kandahar as US bombers hammer the city as opposition fighters continue to advance, meeting patchy resistance.
More than 1,000 US troops have dug in at a desert base, about 170 miles to the south-west, and have stayed out of the conflict.
"In the last 24 hours, five minutes haven't gone by without us hearing bombing and the roaring of planes," said Mr Khalil Ahmed, in Chaman, at the Pakistani border.
Air raids also pounded Afghanistan's east.
Pentagon officials say as well as Kandahar province, warplanes of the US-led coalition are targeting mountains south of Jalalabad, where more than 600 non-Afghan Taliban fighters and al-Qaida members are reported hiding in mountain caves.
A coalition bombing raid in eastern Afghanistan killed more than 100 people yesterday, all of them civilians, witnesses and survivors said.
Jets made four passes over Kama Ado village, 30 miles south of Jalalabad and dropped more than 25 bombs, according to a local farmer.
He and other witnesses say between 100 and 200 people were killed and the village of 30 mud brick and wood homes has been flattened.
Earlier today Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar - still believed to be in the Kandahar area in southern Afghanistan - told his forces it was better to die with dignity than live with humiliation, the Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) said.
And the US today denied a report in AIP that quoted Mr Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, as saying the Taliban had shot down a US warplane over Kandahar today.
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