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US bombs hit Taleban ministry building, mosque

K J M Varma in Islamabad

A day before the beginning of the holy month of Ramazan, the US jets on Friday carried out one of the heaviest bombing raids on the Taleban stronghold of Kandahar, hitting the militia's foreign ministry building and a mosque.

Elsewhere, fighting raged around northern Afghan city of Kunduz where several thousand Taleban and Al Qaeda fighters were holding out against opposition forces and US air strikes.

Giving a new dimension to the US-led campaign against terrorists in Afghanistan, about 100 British commandos landed at Bagram airport, north of Kabul, in the first overt deployment by a western country.

The French Defence Ministry also announced that a group of 600 troops would leave for Uzbekistan en route to northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif to establish a base for coalition humanitarian operations.

Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press reported that heavy US bombing of Kandahar on Thursday night and Friday morning destroyed Taleban foreign ministry building and a mosque in the eastern part of the city.

It also claimed that eleven civilians were killed and 25 others injured in the US bombing raids.

Reports said the Taleban were digging in and building new defensive positions to defend Kandahar, the base of the Taleban spiritual leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.

Northern Alliance forces have also laid a siege to the northern city of Kunduz and were engaged in fierce fighting with an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 foreigners, mostly Arabs and Pakistanis, loyal to Osama bin Laden.

Northern Alliance, which took over Kabul without a fight earlier this week, said there have also been popular uprisings in the eastern provinces of Laghman, Logar, Kunar and Nangahar and that the Taleban have abandoned the central province of Uruzgan.

Taleban have also reportedly withdrawn from the eastern city of Jalalabad, said to be the hub of Al Qaeda's terrorist training.

US special forces have begun searching potential weapons of mass destruction sites in Afghanistan, but so far have made no substantial finds, the commander of the US military campaign said.

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld also said on Thursday that they were checking a report by a journalist of The Times daily who said he stumbled on a trove of partially burnt documents with detailed designs of missiles, bombs and nuclear weapons in a hastily abandoned safehouse in Kabul.

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