WASHINGTON, 8 October — US and British forces pounded Afghanistan’s Taleban regime yesterday, opening a military front in their war on terrorism following the Sept. 11 strikes on New York and Washington.

The two main targets of the campaign, however, suspected mastermind Osama Bin Laden and his protector, Taleban supreme leader Mulla Muhammad Omar, both survived the attacks, Kabul’s spokesman in Pakistan said.

“The battle is now joined on many fronts,” Bush said in a televised address shortly after the strikes began. “We will not waiver, we will not falter, and we will not fail. Peace and freedom will prevail.” The attacks target Bin Laden’s “Al-Qaeda camps and military installations” of Afghanistan’s Taleban regime, he said.

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said US-led forces used “land- and sea-based aircraft, surface ships and submarines” in the strikes, which in its initial stages are targeting Taleban anti-aircraft weapons and planes to minimize the threats against US forces.

Other US officials said some 50 Tomahawk missiles were fired in the attack and in London, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Britain’s “missile-firing submarines are in use tonight.”

The United States has sent 1,000 soldiers to Uzbekistan, which shares a border with Afghanistan and the Voice of America said the first planes had landed. US and British aircraft carriers, more than 300 warplanes, ships armed with cruise missiles and special forces troops gathered within striking distance of Afghanistan. Some 30,000 other troops have also been deployed.

The Taleban quickly condemned the offensive as a “terrorist act” and reiterated their refusal to hand Bin Laden over to the United States. Bin Laden, in a recorded video message broadcast after the attacks by the Al-Jazeera satellite television network, vowed that the United States “will never know security as long as Palestine does not know security.”

It was not immediately clear when, or where the recording was made. Kabul was tense, with power supplies and telephone lines knocked out for about an hour after it was first rocked by the explosions, but there was no sign of panic among civilians, residents said. Taleban troops were seen moving around the city in trucks and pickups, but most civilians had returned indoors after coming out to watch and listen to the attack.

“This is nothing. The planes have dropped bombs but this isn’t a big deal,” a Taleban Foreign Ministry official told the Afghan Islamic Press news agency. “Don’t worry,” he said. “They have bombed areas close to the airport and there’s nothing special about it.”

The night sky lit up with anti-aircraft fire and the flash of explosions as bomber jets flew overhead in the first US-led strikes against the Taleban in retaliation for their refusal to extradite Bin Laden.

The anti-Taleban Northern Alliance said the strikes, in addition to Kabul and Kandahar, the spiritual center of the Taleban, also hit military sites in the eastern city of Jalalabad, Farah in the west and Kunduz in the north.

An Alliance spokesman said targets in Kabul included the presidential palace, the national radio-television building, the airport and anti-aircraft installations east of the city. “We do not have any reports of civilian casualties, but we know the strikes have been accurate,” the spokesman said.

Washington quickly issued a warning to US citizens across the world, telling them the strikes could lead to terror attacks against Americans and US interests. Italy and Germany announced stepped up security around sensitive locations.

In London, Blair, Bush’s closest ally, said: “Last Wednesday, the US government made a specific request that a number of UK military assets be used in the operation which has now begun and I gave authority for these assets to be deployed. “They include the bases at Diego Garcia, reconnaissance and other aircraft and missile-firing submarines,” he told a press conference. “The missile-firing submarines are in use tonight. The air assets will be available for use in the coming days.”

Bush said other allies, including Canada, Australia, Germany and France, had pledged to contribute as the action unfolds and some 40 other nations had provided backing. “We are supported by the collective will of the world,” he said. Terrorist camps, air bases and air defense installations were the first set of targets yesterday, a US defense official said, vowing that “it’s going to be shake and bake until we smoke them out.”

The United States had vowed to strike at the Taleban unless they surrendered Bin Laden, wanted for the terrorist onslaught on the United States. Last week, Bush presented evidence to allies proving that Bin Laden, Al-Qaeda and the Taleban were behind the Sept. 11 attacks in which Bin Laden followers hijacked four US passenger planes.

Afghanistan’s Northern Alliance said it had complied with a US request to close its airspace and ground its small fleet of helicopters and fixed-wing planes a few hours before the attack began. It warned residents of Kabul to stay away from military installations. The Taleban have been diplomatically isolated and are now almost encircled by hostile military forces as the assault began.

Under intense pressure and with reports mounting of defections by some of its supporters, the Taleban have reacted with a mixture of defiance and attempts at conciliation. They said an extra 8,000 troops were being sent to northern border with Uzbekistan to join several thousand already there.

“We have deployed our forces there at all important places. This is the question of our self respect and we will never bow before the Americans and will fight to the last,” Afghan Islamic Press quoted a Taleban spokesman as saying.

After Sept. 11, Bush had declared a global anti-terror offensive on several fronts, including diplomacy, intelligence sharing, freezing financial assets of terror-linked groups and the arrests of known terrorists worldwide. “Today we focus on Afghanistan, but the battle is broader,” he said. “Every nation has a choice to make. In this conflict, there is no neutral ground. If any government sponsors the outlaws and killers of innocents, they have become outlaws and murderers themselves. And they will take that lonely path at their own peril.”

Bush stressed, however, that humanitarian considerations would not go on the back burner. “At the same time, the oppressed people of Afghanistan will know the generosity of America and our allies,” he said. “As we strike military targets, we will also drop food, medicine and supplies to the starving and suffering men and women and children of Afghanistan.

In Kabul, scores of people prepared to leave the beleaguered capital, a day after the Taleban anti-aircraft guns tried to shoot down a circling spy aircraft. Security forces in Pakistan’s border province of Balochistan ordered Afghan refugees to move from camps near the airport after intercepting a message threatening to down an airliner.

The United Nations says a quarter of Afghanistan’s 24 million population are dependent on food aid, that more than a million people have fled their homes within the war- and drought-ravaged country. The UN estimated that up to 1.5 million more may try to cross into neighboring countries. Aid agencies stepped up their pleas for emergency food shipments to the country and Oxfam said between 1 million and 2 million people were already on the road in Afghanistan, trying to reach safety.

Meanwhile, Richard Boucher, spokesman at State Department, told Arab News that the United States was working hard to keep its allies informed about the strikes on military bases in Afghanistan.

“The president, the vice president and the secretary of state have been speaking to the world leaders to notify them of our efforts to avoid civilian casualties and continue humanitarian aid to the Afghani people,” Boucher said.