US and allied forces yesterday searched rugged Afghan terrain for fugitives Osama bin Laden and deposed Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar as tribal chiefs squabbled over the former Taliban stronghold, Kandahar.
Bin Laden was said to be personally leading about 1,000 men in the defense of his bomb-blasted mountain hideouts in eastern Afghanistan, anti-Taliban forces said yesterday.
Pakistan said it had moved helicopter gunships and troop reinforcements to its long border with Afghanistan to prevent fleeing Taliban or members of bin Laden's al-Qaeda network from sneaking into the country.
A team of UN peacekeeping experts was in Kabul yesterday to plan the deployment of a multinational security force in the capital to prevent the kind of bloodbaths that Afghanistan has witnessed in previous changeovers of power.
On Saturday, the UN World Food Programme started its biggest ever food distribution in the capital, handing out sacks of wheat to more than three-quarters of the war-ravaged city's population.
Anti-Taliban forces had pushed al-Qaeda fighters out of their bases in the cave-riddled Tora Bora heights and were attacking them in nearby forests, a spokesman said.
"Osama himself has taken command of the fighting," Mohammad Amin said from eastern Jalalabad city. "He, along with around 1,000 of his people, including some Taliban officials, have now dug themselves into the forests of Spin Ghar after we overran all their bases in Tora Bora."
There was no independent confirmation of Amin's account.
US warplanes have pounded al-Qaeda forces in the snow-streaked Tora Bora peaks for days in support of local Afghan forces pursuing bin Laden, prime suspect in the Sept. 11 attacks on the US that killed nearly 4,000.
The US launched strikes on Afghanistan on Oct. 7 to try to catch bin Laden, destroy his al-Qaeda network and punish the Taliban for giving them sanctuary in Afghanistan.
About 2,000 fighters loyal to the new Afghan leaders are combing Tora Bora's caves and tunnels near Jalalabad where bin Laden might be hiding.
"You could bomb day and night and it won't make a big difference," said local commander Hazrat Ali. "Soldiers have to go in there."
In Kandahar, squabbling Pashtun tribal chiefs yesterday were vying to control the former Taliban bastion and meeting in council to try to patch up old sore points and end a third decade of warfare that began with the Soviet invasion of 1979.
Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan's designated interim prime minister has called for the meeting to try to resolve disputes over who should rule Kandahar and the border town of Spin Boldak.
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