WASHINGTON/ISLAMABAD, 29 October — It took a split second for a “stray” bomb yesterday to wipe out eight members of a single Afghan family, including three babies and other children. Images of this and other civilians and suffering in Afghanistan continued yesterday to sicken millions of people across the world.

The Taleban were again attacked by US warplanes; and again they showed no obvious sign of weakening. As winter nears, the daily pattern of death and destruction — with no apparent gain — has become firmly established. Refugees continue to flee the hell on Earth that Afghanistan has become in their thousands.

Beleaguered President Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan complained that the civilian toll was “excessive,” but opposition took on a new and dramatic urgency in his own country when the Islamist party threatened a mass sit-in to force Musharraf to resign. Then two other radical Muslim youth groups in Pakistan’s tribal regions publicly threatened supporters of Afghanistan’s former King, Muhammad Zahir Shah, with death.

The US operation is foundering in the face of stiff resistance from the Taleban, rising bombing errors and mounting civilian casualties, and a growing tide of refugees. US warplanes opened up a new front in the war against the Taleban, dropping 10 bombs on militia positions in northeast Afghanistan, an opposition general said. Atiqullah Baryalai, a vice defense minister and general for the opposition Northern Alliance, told foreign reporters “some bombs hit their targets and some did not.”

It is the first time since US air raids on Taleban targets started on Oct. 7 that Taleban positions in northeast Afghanistan, close to the Tajikistan border, have been targeted. Al-Muhajiroon group in Pakistan said three Britons and two American Muslims were killed while fighting alongside the Taleban.

Territory controlled by the opposition Northern Alliance is concentrated in the region. Baryalai said the Alliance had given its accord several weeks ago for US airstrikes in northeast Afghanistan.

Foreign reporters taken to the opposition-controlled Ai Khanun hill overlooking Taleban positions heard three strikes over a three hour period from midmorning yesterday. Jet engines could still be heard flying over the region as night fell.

Two radical Muslim youth groups in Pakistan’s tribal regions publicly threatened supporters of Zahir Shah with death. “Any person who works for the return of the ex-king or takes part in attempts to overthrow the Taleban government will be killed, his house burned and his family expelled from the zone,” the groups said.

Qazi Hussain Ahmad, the head of the Jamaat-e-Islami, told a rally in the eastern city of Lahore that the sit-in in Islamabad, for which he did not give a date, would result in the ouster of the Musharraf government and be the catalyst for an Islamic revolution.

And in a further sign of growing anti-US sentiment an estimated 25,000 people, organized by the hard-line Islamic Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI), massed in Lahore demanding the ousting of Musharraf for supporting Washington. The Organization of the Islamic Conference yesterday reiterated its condemnation of last month’s attacks on the US, but expressed concern over civilian casualties from the airstrikes on Afghanistan.

At least 10 civilians were killed as a bomb hit three houses in the impoverished Char Qala neighborhood in Kabul. The dead included several children, including three babies, witnesses told reporters. One man was decapitated. Witnesses in Kabul said the bomb, one of four dropped on the capital early in the morning, destroyed three houses in the Char Qala area.

Eight members of one family — father, mother and their three sons and three daughters — were among the dead. Ahib Dad, a 45-year-old father of four, held his dead baby son in his arms and wept uncontrollably. “I heard the sound of the plane and I came out to see which way it was going. Suddenly it bombed our home. I lost two of my children,” he told reporters.

One grieving old man added: “These are infidels they want to eliminate Muslims and Islam. There was nothing to be bombed in this house.” The Taleban claimed last week that more than 1,000 civilians died in US raids countrywide — a figure Washington has rejected — and an AFP tally of civilian deaths compiled from non-Taleban sources stands at 390 — 37 of them in Kabul.

As the pounding of Afghanistan entered a fourth week, US forces also mounted attacks on the key northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif, the Taleban stronghold of Kandahar and the cities of Herat and Jalalabad. Three people were reportedly killed.

Abdullah Abdullah, foreign minister for the Northern Alliance, said he believed some militants had already begun crossing into Afghanistan and demanded that Pakistan stop them. “Whatever it is, it has to be stopped,” Abdullah told reporters in Jabal Seraj. “Pakistan cannot claim to cooperate with the international alliance, get debt relief and then allow thousands to cross and fight the people of Afghanistan.”

In a parallel move, other tribesmen have since Thursday — the start of the gathering on the border — blocked the historic “Silk Road” to China in protest at the US attacks, stranding hundreds of cars and trucks and threatening to blow up any vehicle that attempts to force its way through.

Police said they believed the massacre in Bahawalpur may have been an act of terrorist revenge against the US bombings. The killings, commented Jordan’s King Abdallah, underscore concerns that “Osama Bin Ladens” around the world are trying to pit East against West.

In London, British Prime Minister Tony Blair prepared to urge a confused British public to show “moral fibber” by holding firm in the fight against terrorism, as ministers stressed Britain was committed “for the long haul”.

“Britain is a very moral nation with a strong sense of right and wrong, and that moral fibber will defeat the fanaticism of the terrorists and their supporters,” Blair was expected to tell the Welsh Assembly tomorrow, according to Downing Street.

A further blow came Friday when opposition commander Abdul Haq, a hero of Afghan resistance to the 1979-1989 Soviet occupation, was captured and executed by the Taleban.

The ruling militia refused to allow Abdul Haq’s body back into Pakistan for burial next to his wife and children — killed in an attack blamed on the Taleban — and buried him instead in his home village, an aide said. The story of how he was captured and killed emerged from an account yesterday in the Washington Post, when a US contact related how Abdul Haq entered Afghanistan “on a brazen personal mission to recruit Taleban defectors born of frustration over US indifference to his efforts.”

The Post said Abdul Haq expected to find anti-Taleban support in border villages, but found instead people outraged with the US campaign and the civilian death toll. He was cornered while attempting to escape on horseback with a party of 19 and asked for US helicopters to rescue him, said the associate, James Ritchie, but they never arrived. “The US hung him out to dry,” Ritchie told the Post.

But US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told ABC television yesterday that the United States did provide “air assistance” to Abdul Haq before he was captured and killed. Rumsfeld would not confirm that air cover was given by intelligence operatives, but said the US military was not involved and support came “from another element of the government.”

Abdul Haq “requested assistance and received it,” Rumsfeld said, adding: “The assistance unfortunately was from the air, and he was on the ground. And regrettably, he was killed.”

In Amman, King Abdullah warned in an interview with AFP that any attack on an Arab country as part of the US-led campaign would result in a “great catastrophe.”

“The heinous crime that was committed in the United States is a crime against all of us,” he said, but added: “In no way should the Arabs be held responsible for these crimes. We have explained to the coalition the great catastrophe if an Arab country is hit,” Abdullah said, when asked about the possibility of an Arab country, notably Iraq, being targeted.

Islamabad has allowed US warplanes and missiles to fly across its territory and granted the use of air bases for emergency landings and possible search and rescue missions into Afghanistan.

The government’s stance has been backed by most Pakistanis but is opposed by Islamic radicals and sections of the population with ethnic ties to Afghanistan’s dominant Pashtun tribe.

Pakistani authorities were monitoring thousands of armed Pashtuns camped near the border and waiting for a call from the Taleban to cross into Afghanistan and join the anti-US fight. They were in Bajaur tribal area of North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and were armed with Kalashnikov automatic rifles, small machine-guns and rocket launchers, police said.

The Interior Ministry said they are led by Soofi Muhammad, head of Tehreek Nifaz-e-Sharia Mohammadi (TNSM) group which wants Islamic Shariah law in Pakistan. “We will resist if the authorities try to stop us. The jihad will start here,” a spokesman for the group, Qazi Ihsanullah, told reporters.

The chief of the Organization of Islamic Conference yesterday expressed concern over civilian casualties from the airstrikes on Afghanistan. “The condemnation of the attacks on the US made in a resolution at a meeting of the foreign ministers of OIC countries last month stands,” OIC chief Abdelouahed Belkeziz told reporters in Dhaka.

“But the deaths and damages inflicted by the US-led attacks on Afghanistan are causing considerable concern around the world,” said Belkeziz, who is on a four-day visit to Bangladesh. “OIC always stands against civilian killings.”

At a meeting with Bangladesh Foreign Minister A.Q.M. Badruddoza Chowdhury, Belkeziz said “a big fund” was being raised by the OIC to support the “distressed people of Afghanistan”, the official BSS news agency said. They also discussed the Palestinian problem and “the need to protect the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people”, the agency said without giving details.