KABUL, Oct 21: US attacks on Afghanistan intensified on Sunday with helicopters deployed for the first time while the Taliban ordered extra weapons and ammunition sent out to counter raids by American commandos.

As the air campaign entered its third week, raids on Kabul left at least 18 civilians dead, according to the Taliban. Ten deaths from a stray bomb were confirmed by residents.

US fighter jets roared across the capital at low altitude shortly after dawn and for the first time in the campaign Taliban anti-aircraft guns were silent.

Kabul residents reported hearing helicopters over the city late Saturday. Taliban officials said helicopters had also been involved in overnight attacks on Kandahar and claimed their forces had prevented them from landing in either city.

Abdul Hanan Hemat, chief of the Taliban’s Bakhtar Information Agency, said 18 civilians were killed in Kabul on Sunday and 50 to 60 civilians had been killed in air attacks in the western city of Herat over the past three days.

One stray US bomb landed on a Kabul residential neighbourhood killing at least 10 people in the worst case of civilian casualties to be independently confirmed since airstrikes began on October 7.

Residents told AFP that nine of those who died in the Khair Khana district — four women, three children and two men — were from the same family.

Herat also suffered another heavy night of bombing and US warplanes were reported to have hit Taliban frontline positions in the northern province of Samangan for a second day.

The lack of response to the US raids on Kabul was the clearest sign yet that two weeks of pounding have disabled the Taliban’s air defences, clearing the way for more ground operations by US commandos of the kind carried out for the first time this weekend.

An “emergency” meeting of the Taliban cabinet on Sunday ordered extra weapons and ammunition sent across the country to fight US commandos, a Taliban spokesman said.

The militia also promised extra security to aid groups working in the stricken country, Education Minister Mullah Amir Khan Muttaqi told AFP.

Muttaqi said Taliban ministers ordered the distribution of “rocket launchers, heavy machine guns, and anti-aircraft machine guns” to take on US commandos.

He said extra ammunition would also be sent to villages and districts under Taliban control.

The Taliban cabinet also ordered extra security for aid workers in Afghanistan, Muttaqi was quoted as saying.

CLAIM: The top US military officer on Sunday dismissed as wishful thinking a Taliban claim to have killed 20 to 25 members of a US raiding party in Afghanistan.