In the north, a B-52 bomber made its debut in the war, sending up a wall of orange flame and clouds of dust along Taliban positions overlooking opposition-held Bagram airbase north of Kabul.
It was one of the heaviest raids of the campaign in the area where the Taliban fighters are dug in facing the opposition Northern Alliance.
A photographer watched the silver eight-engine aircraft make two raids, causing multiple explosions.
The Taliban’s southern nerve centre has been crippled by more than three weeks of bombing, but ordinary people said they were suffering more than the intended targets of the military campaign.
The houses of Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar have been flattened and other key Taliban ministries and military facilities heavily damaged.
The intensified attacks followed opposition calls for the United States to hit the Taliban harder to clear the way for a push towards Kabul. A small number of US soldiers are on the ground in northern Afghanistan to help coordinate the raids.
Ahmad Ziah Masood, brother of former military leader Ahmad Shah Masood who was assassinated on Sept 9, said he hoped the opposition offensive would start within five days.
“Every day the Americans are bombing the front line and now we should do something,” he said.
He said he believed Osama bin Laden was hiding in mountains north of Kandahar.
In Kandahar, stronghold of Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, foreign reporters were taken to the site of an attack.
“The bombs fell at 4.30 this morning,” Doctor Obaidullah informed reporters taken to the Red Crescent clinic in the Dagh-i-Pul suburb of Kandahar.
Obaidullah, his head, right hand and left leg in bandages from wounds he said he had sustained in the raid, said 13 people — including patients and staff at the clinic — were killed and six wounded in the bombing.
Reporters heard US planes drop at least one bomb on the city around 4.30am (5am PST).
Dozens of people gathered at the clinic in a city that has been the target of almost daily U.S bombing in Washington’s “war on terror”, aimed at capturing Osama bin Laden and punishing the Taliban for harbouring him.
“Down with Bush”, “Down with America”, the crowd shouted.
“These foreigners are sons of pigs,” shouted one man in the crowd as the journalists toured the city, which bore the scars of weeks of bombing.
The Taliban, lightly-armed guerrillas who can melt into Afghanistan’s rugged landscape, have not collapsed under three weeks of US aerial onslaught and none of the Pakhtoon tribes that make up the militia have defected.
Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil was in defiant mood when he met the foreign reporters in Kandahar late on Wednesday. He challenged US President George W. Bush and Britain’s Tony Blair to fight a dual with Kalashnikov rifles with Mullah Omar.
He denied media reports of a rift in the movement.
BIG BOMB: The blast from the raid on Kandahar rattled windows in the suburbs and shook the ground.
“It was huge, the whole building was shaking,” said an eyewitness.
“They are targeting the civilian population,” said resident Mohammad Hashim.
“Have they targeted Taliban positions so far?”
Despite the bombing many shops in Kandahar stayed open. Men were shopping, accompanying women who swept through the streets.
Electronics stores and mechanics’ workshops were doing business, and fruit stalls were laden with apples, pomegranates, grapes and bananas imported from Pakistan.
CIVILIAN CASUALTIES: But ordinary people angrily complained about mounting civilian casualties and the added hardships of life in a city which is mostly without running water or electricity.
“We are just poor people. Why are they killing the common people in the civilian population? They are forcing us to stand up with the Taliban against the Americans,” said a distraught Haji Mohammad, 32, whose uncle was killed in a bomb attack on a civilian area five days ago.
Mohammad said only one hand remained of his uncle after the raid on an area in Lungar suburb some two kilometres to the east of the city centre. A nearby mosque was also badly damaged.
“I saw the plane flying low and very slowly and it just kept firing,” he said, apparently referring to an AC-130 gunship which can direct withering cannon fire at ground targets.
The Taliban invited foreign journalists to visit the city, 450kms southwest of Kabul, and see the destruction.
“We brought you here to see with your own eyes that there is no military camp or Taliban base here. This is just the civilian population,” said Mohammad Naeem, a Taliban guard accompanying the journalists.
“You can see that even a hospital has been hit.”
Omar and Osama both had houses on the western side of the main road leading out of Kandahar, an ancient seat of the Afghan monarchy and the political and spiritual heartland of the Taliban.
“Their houses are completely flattened, razed to the ground. The Taliban headquarters in the centre of town is completely destroyed, so is the office of (ministry of prevention of) Vice and (promotion of) Virtue,” another resident said.
But despite the barbarous US onslaught, the Taliban remain defiant and so do many inhabitants.
Taxi driver Mohammad Sarwar said Afghans are no longer frightened of US bombardments.
“We are not afraid. There was some fear in the early days but how long can we shut our businesses. We are now used to these raids,” he said.
Foreign aid workers say only 20 per cent of the population of about 20,000 have remained. These are mainly the ones who are too poor or too scared to leave.
Most people have to store water from a spring several kilometres out of town and electricity is available only to those with generators. Yet many shops and businesses remained open despite the constant threat of attack.
Heavily armed Taliban soldiers were evident in force, either on foot or riding around in their trademark pickup trucks. Some were seen using stolen United Nations vehicles.
“It’s safer for us to use UN cars because we are being targeted in our own vehicles,” said one young Taliban soldier.—Reuters\AFP