WASHINGTON/KABUL, 16 October — US forces yesterday unleashed the fiercest daytime attacks yet on Kabul raining bombs on military and civilian areas and prompting pleas for mercy from the city’s population.

Pakistan, a key ally of the US in the campaign, said that its support for the campaign could be undermined by mounting civilian casualties. Islamabad made it clear it wanted the air campaign brought to an end as swiftly as possible.

"We will again emphasize that targets should be clearly focused in this campaign and there should be care to avoid any civilian casualties," Foreign Ministry spokesman Riaz Muhammad Khan said.

"Prolongation of the operations will also be a source of concern for us," he added.

Meanwhile, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf stated yesterday that there were no divisions in his country’s army and that all the generals were totally behind him.

"We are no banana republic. Ours is a professional army. They are fully behind the commander. If anybody wants to overthrow me, let them try," the president told reporters at his residence.

The spokesman also said Islamabad did not regard the Taleban as terrorists. Khan said Pakistan had been grieved by civilian casualties caused by military strikes on Afghanistan and had noted American regrets over such deaths.

He denied that President Musharraf had said in an interview published in the United States yesterday that he would advise Washington first to "take out" Taleban leader Mulla Omar before turning its attentions to Bin Laden.

"The president had not granted any such interview," he said, adding that "no such comments were made".

"Get Mulla Omar and Osama won’t be able to operate. He’ll be on the run," Musharraf was quoted as telling USA Today and CBS radio in a joint interview.

An executive editor at CBS radio news in New York said the station stood by its report. "It wasn’t a formal interview but it was on the record. It lasted about an hour," Mike Donahue told Reuters. USA Today also stood by the interview.

Pakistan’s backing has been crucial to the air campaign with US planes and missiles flying through its airspace from ships in the Arabian Sea.

A cruise missile fired overnight by American forces against Taleban targets inside Afghanistan strayed into Pakistan’s southwestern territory bordering the embattled country, officials said.

The missile had landed on the Pakistan side of Spin Ghar (White Mountain) hills near the border town of Parachinar, an administrative official of the tribal territory said in Peshawar.

The missile hit shepherds’ hamlets in Spin Ghar killing sheep and goats, reports from the area said. There were no human casualties.

The US raids on targets all across Afghanistan was followed up by wave after wave of attacks on Kabul, where only the poorest people have been left to pray that bombs intended for Taleban military bases will miss their homes.

At least 10 large explosions were heard, one of which was followed by the sight of a huge cloud of dust swirling up to the sky in the north of the city in a sign that a traditional Afghan mud-brick home may have been hit. The World Food Program said one of its workers had been injured by shrapnel when a bomb fell close to one of its warehouses.

"The Americans promised to drop bombs only on military bases but now they are hitting civilian areas as well," Abdul Malik, 34, an egg seller in the Deh Afghanan area of the city, told AFP.

"When the attacks take place my children come to me and my wife and we hold them in our arms. But they still cry and scream."

Two villages were set on fire yesterday by the airstrikes, the Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) reported.

AIP said Gerekhil and Morgai villages were hit during the bombing of a target in Agam, 35 kilometers south of Jalalabad city in eastern Afghanistan. Taliban Army’s No. 1 Corp in Jalalabad was also bombed but caused no casualties because the base had been vacated, according to Taleban administrator, Molvi Sadar Azam, the AIP said.

The Taleban have estimated the number of civilian casualties since airstrikes began at more than 300, including around 200 in a single village in eastern Afghanistan.

International journalists who visited the village have confirmed that it was apparently decimated by a bomb, although they could not verify the exact death toll.

The Taleban said another 12 civilians were killed and 32 injured when US airstrikes hit the capital of northwestern Badghis province, Qua Nau, overnight. In Kabul, Muhammad Tayyab Aghal, a spokesman for Taleban leader Mulla Omar dismissed rumors that the Taleban’s Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmed Muttawakel, seen as one of the regime’s moderates, had left for Pakistan and was set to defect.

Qatar-based Al-Jazeera reported Mutawakkil arrived in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) overnight seeking to push Islamic countries to mediate with the United States.

The trip by the Taleban foreign minister, who reportedly went to Pakistan on Sunday, was made "in consultation" with Mulla Omar.

The Qatari channel quoted the Taleban’s former charge d’affaires in Abu Dhabi, Aziz Abdurrahman, denying reports that the minister had defected.

A US defense official in Washington said a fourth American aircraft carrier moved near striking range of Afghanistan. He said the attacks yesterday were robust. The official, who asked not to be identified, said the carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt had headed south through the Red Sea toward the northern Indian Ocean after passing through the Suez Canal on Saturday. The carriers Carl Vinson, Independence and Kitty Hawk are already in the Gulf and Indian Ocean region near Afghanistan.

A Northern Alliance spokesman told AFP that its forces were within five kilometers of Mazar-e-Sharif and predicted it would soon fall to them. The capture of the strategically located city would be a major coup for the alliance and their biggest advance since the US airstrikes began. Ismail Khan, the opposition’s top commander in western Afghanistan, claimed up to 50 Taleban fighters had been killed by US airstrikes on the front-line in Badghis and that 10 Taleban commanders and 350 soldiers in the area had surrendered over the weekend. The Taleban have dismissed similar opposition claims as propaganda.

"We have just received this news now, we are six km from the airport," Khoji Kahar, an official at the opposition Alliance’s foreign ministry, told Reuters. The two towns taken by the forces in the north under Commander Ustad Attah were Shadian and Marmol, both to the south of Mazar-e-Sharif, a strategic city that lies near the border with Uzbekistan, he said. CNN reported yesterday that representatives of the Al- Qaeda network warned of "serious consequences" if Afghan homes were destroyed in the airstrikes. CNN correspondent Nic Robertson said he met with representatives of the Al-Qaeda organization in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, yesterday, and they conveyed what they described as "a special message."

They also told him that Bin Laden was well and confident "he would win this war," Robertson said in his report.

In Islamabad, a delegation from Afghanistan’s ex-King, Muhammad Zahir Shah began talks with Pakistan leaders on a post-Taleban government. The delegation members met Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar and President Pervez Musharraf.

In Rome, the foreign ministers of Italy and France met the ex-king yesterday and said afterward that his plan for the creation of an alternative government to the Taleban could be realized "quite quickly". Italian Foreign Minister Renato Ruggiero and his French counterpart Hubert Vedrine held 40 minutes of talks with the 87-year-old former monarch and suggested that Afghan elders could meet in Rome to start drawing up a new administration.

"Events in Afghanistan could happen quite quickly, although it is impossible to say exactly how quickly," Ruggiero told a news conference. "The political process of moving the country toward peace could also happen quite quickly," he added.

The former Afghan king has, meanwhile, asked the United Nations to send a multinational peacekeeping force to Afghanistan once the Taleban lose power, a spokesman said. Zahir Shah made the request in a letter sent to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Saturday, the spokesman, Hamid Sidiq, told AFP.

"A multinational peacekeeping force should enter Kabul to maintain the security of the city and to thus avoid the mistakes committed in the past," the letter said, according to Sidiq. "The letter was sent two days ago with the signature of Zahir Shah," the spokesman said.

The United Nations was "positively" considering the demand, though a full response has yet to come, he said.

A senior official of anti-Taleban Northern Alliance said tha alliance was firm on a deal it recently struck with the former monarch on forming an important decision-making council, a senior official said. Abdullah Abdullah, the opposition alliance foreign minister said that either their delegation would come to Rome or delegates of the ex-king would travel to the opposition-held parts of the country to finalize the deal.