US warplanes target retreating Taliban

For the first time in weeks, relieved residents of Kabul awoke today after a night free of the nearby crash of US bombs.

Triumphant northern alliance fighters patrolled the streets, and their leaders said the Islamic militia was losing its grip on its southern strongholds.

US warplanes, whose bombs softened up Taliban troops and helped force them to abandon Kabul to the northern alliance early on Tuesday, kept up the pressure on the battered Taliban with more air raids.

American aircraft bombed the airport and military installations around the city of Jalalabad at least six times overnight and early in the morning, the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press reported.

Citing an unidentified Taliban official, the agency also said warplanes attacked a military base in Khost, six miles from the border with Pakistan.

The Pentagon said US special forces were in southern Afghanistan, working on the next phase of the campaign against the Taliban and al Qaida terrorists.

Washington is intent on hunting down Taliban leaders and terror suspect Osama bin Laden, who may seek refuge in caves, underground bunkers or rugged mountains and scores of other hiding places.

In Kabul, a northern alliance official said there were reports of uprisings against the Taliban by residents in eastern Nangarhar province as well as in the southern provinces of Ghazni and Wardak. The reports could not be independently confirmed.

‘‘People have revolted against the Taliban,’’ said Saeed Hussain Anwari, a top Shiite Muslim commander who rode triumphantly into Kabul after a string of sudden victories over the Taliban in northern Afghanistan.

Anwari said anti-Taliban fighters had also seized the airport in Kandahar, the headquarters of the Taliban’s supreme leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar. The Taliban have retreated into the mountains around Kandahar, but the city itself was still contested, Anwari said.

At least 200 Pashtun fighters mutinied in Kandahar, said a Taliban official, Mullah Najibullah, at the Pakistani border at Chaman.

In a radio address, Omar said he was in Kandahar - a report that could not be verified - and urged his fighters to resist in the name of Islam.

Accompanied by 1,000 armed men, a former governor of Kandahar, Gul Agha Sherzai, left Tuesday night for the city from Quetta in Pakistan in what he said was a bid to persuade the Taliban to surrender.

An aide to Sherzai said the decision was taken after a three-day meeting in Pakistan of Afghan Pashtun tribal elders and former guerrilla commanders.

There were several front lines to the southeast and south of Kabul, but no reports of heavy fighting, according to the northern alliance.

Alliance troops celebrated the capture of the prize they had been fighting for since they were driven out by the Taliban in 1996. A small number of US troops were on hand to advise them.

In Kabul on Tuesday, Afghans brought their radios out of hiding and played music in the streets, savouring the end of five years of harsh Taliban rule as the northern alliance marched in. Diplomats sought UN help in fashioning a government for the shattered country.

The dizzying cascade of events in Afghanistan turned the opposition into the country’s chief power overnight - and brought to the forefront the issue of ensuring that it shares power.

The United States and its allies want a government that includes the ethnic minorities that make up the alliance and the Pashtuns, the country’s largest ethnic group.

Today an unemployed Pashtun man pointed to houses on a hill that were gutted five years ago during bloody infighting among the ethnic Tajiks, Uzbeks and others who now rule Kabul.

‘‘We lost our houses. Look, you can see it,’’ said Amonullah, waving a hand across the ruins on a dusty hillside in Pashtun-dominated southern Kabul. ‘‘This time, God willing, things will be different.’’

However, a feared backlash against Pashtuns did not materialise, despite United Nations reports of summary executions after the northern alliance seized the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif.

In Karte Nau, a largely Pashtun neighbourhood, children flew kites, teenagers listened to music and men shaved their beards, flouting the strict rules that had been imposed by the Taliban. They blasted music on radios.

‘‘We haven’t heard any music for six years. We are crazy about music!’’ said Omar, a 20-year-old Pashtun mechanic.

Uncertain what to do, most women remained in their homes, and those who did venture out wore the burqa, the enveloping covering that the Taliban made them wear.

The alliance leaders said they had deployed 3,000 security troops across Kabul to bring order not to occupy it and insisted they were committed to a broad-based government.

The alliance foreign minister, Abdullah Abdullah, invited all Afghan factions except the Taliban to come to Kabul to negotiate on the country’s future. The top UN envoy for Afghanistan outlined a plan for a two-year transitional government with a multinational security force.

President George W. Bush said there was ‘‘great progress’’ in the campaign launched on October 7 to uproot al Qaida and punish the Taliban for harbouring bin Laden, the chief suspect in the September terror attacks on the United States.