QUETTA, Oct 30: US blitz of Kandahar over the last 25 days has left the Taliban bastion a dirty, empty mess being taken over by scavengers.

Residents said the latest airstrikes were mainly aimed at military targets around the southern city that is the spiritual capital of the hardline movement.

Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar is based there and Osama bin Laden has a house in the city, 450kms southwest of Kabul.

But more than three weeks of attacks have devastated Afghanistan’s ancient capital.

Kandahar had become “a filthy mess covered in flies”, with no electricity or water, and very few people, said the resident contacted from Quetta.

According to United Nations estimates, 70 per cent of the population of about 200,000 have fled to the border and other havens since US air raids started on Oct 7, seeking to force the Taliban to hand over Osama.

Aid workers say that those left in major cities are too poor or too scared to leave.

“An occasional truck goes by,” the resident said of the scene in the streets.

“The few people that are here are ‘scavengers’. They’re like dogs, creeping into what’s left of people’s houses at night, trying to find something to eat.”

He said dangerous health conditions had been made worse by the weather, with winter conditions looming.

US airstrikes have picked out Kandahar because of its strategic importance to the Taliban.

The US Defence Department said attacks on Monday had targeted caves and tunnels in the Kandahar region believed to be used by Taliban commanders and Osama.

The resident said the latest bombs started falling “early in the morning and lasted four or five hours and they were targeting the military”.

“They are not targeting civilians and that was obvious,” said the resident.

“The fighter planes would sweep in on their target, release their payload and pull up into the sky, then you hold your breath, wait and see where the payload lands.

“Usually the bombings used to strike in the evenings but there seems to have been a change of plans and now they are bombing in the mornings.”—AFP