Taliban leader unharmed in US air strikes, says official

A senior Taliban representative has denied the group's top leader Mullah Mohammed Omar was injured or killed in US air strikes on Tuesday.

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said America was "tightening the noose" around Osama bin Laden and his Taliban allies.

The former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan said Omar, remained unharmed.

Abdul Salam Zaeef said US planes had hit the house of a local Taliban leader in Kandahar's Dand area. But it was not an al-Qaida or the Taliban base, he said. He gave no details of casualties and his claim could not be independently verified.

Mr Rumsfield said the Pentagon ordered air strikes against a compound near Kandahar after learning it was being used by senior leaders of the Taliban, al-Qaida and Wafa, a Saudi humanitarian group among several groups named by the US as aiding bin Laden and his network.

There were no hostilities reported near or in the compound early on Wednesday. The grounds of the prison were littered with mutilated corpses and unexploded mortar shells.

US General Tommy Franks, who runs the US-led military campaign in Afghanistan, said 30 to 40 hard-core fighters were still holding out in the mud-walled fortress near Mazar-e-Sharif.

He said the hunt for bin Laden and his al-Qaida followers was focusing on two areas: Kandahar in the south and a mountain base called Tora Bora south of Jalalabad in the east near the Pakistan border.