KABUL, Oct 26: US jets launched a series of heavy bombing raids near Kabul’s residential areas on Friday night, some of which seemed to be targeting a Taliban military base close to a suburb, residents said.

They said five bombs exploded in the city after as jets roared overhead and Taliban gunners responded with sporadic anti-aircraft fire.

The first bomb hit near the relatively well-off Wasir Akbar Khan residential suburb, possibly targeting a Taliban military base in the same vicinity.

Fifteen minutes later another bomb shattered windows of the AFP office in Wasir Akbar Khan and electricity was cut.

More than an hour later residents heard a series of bomb or missile explosions and what sounded like small-arms fire from Taliban rockets and assault rifles.

“They dropped bombs one after the other in quick succession within the city limits,” an eyewitness said.

“The explosions were very, very close.”

In the north, Afghan opposition forces reported heavy fighting and some lost ground near Mazar-i-Sharif, as US aircraft took a day off from bombarding the Taliban frontline.

A spokesman for Ustad Attah, a senior opposition commander trying to wrest Mazar-i-Sharif from the Taliban, said the militia had taken back the town of Marmul.

The opposition had held the town, about 15kms southeast of Mazar-i-Sharif, for only a few days before losing it.

“There are civilians living in Marmul and we did not want to defend it too strongly because it would have put their lives in too much danger,” Attah’s secretary Kodrattullah said.

He said the opposition and Taliban were engaged in fairly heavy fighting in northern Afghanistan as he spoke.

In itself the loss of a town need not signify much in Afghanistan’s interminable civil conflict, but it does suggest that the Northern Alliance, a small and ill-equipped fighting force, is encountering significant resistance.

The Taliban have been subjected to nearly three weeks of US-led air raids, raising hopes in Washington that the movement would collapse.

But despite opposition talk of mass desertions, Mazar-i-Sharif, which has a strategically important airfield, is proving harder to take than some had expected and the front line north of Kabul has not moved.

The US planes did not carry out air attacks on Friday on the Taliban’s frontline, 30-40kms north of Kabul, for the first time in six days.

Opposition commanders said the decision not to pound the Taliban was probably due to sensitivities about combat on Friday.

From the village of Rabat — about two kilometres from the forward line of opposition trenches running across the lush Shomali Plain — the regular boom of tank and artillery fire was all that could be heard throughout the afternoon.

On the five previous days Western warplanes dropped dozens of missiles on the Taliban positions just behind where US officials believe the Al Qaeda has a base.

The opposition has made it clear that it does not intend to seize Kabul, although it has not ruled out capitalizing on weakness in Taliban defences caused by the airstrikes.—AFP\Reuters