WASHINGTON/ISLAMABAD, 5 November — US warplanes showered Afghanistan’s ruling Taleban front lines with more than 100 bombs yesterday in the heaviest strikes of their four-week-old campaign where foreign aid workers estimate up to 300 fighters of the ruling Taleban militia have been wounded in the last week.

Washington also said it had deployed more troops inside Afghanistan. The announcement in Washington by Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, of an "increase" in the number of US forces on the ground came as US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld strongly said the military campaign would continue throughout the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

"Just last night, the night before, we put in a couple more teams with other opposition leaders," Myers told NBC television, referring to commanders of the anti-Taleban Northern Alliance. "The more teams we get on the ground, the more effectively we bring air power to bear on the Taleban lines," he said, "and we’ll continue to do that."

At a news conference during a lightning visit to Islamabad, Rumsfeld also said the Taleban regime were no longer a functioning government but still maintained "enclaves" of considerable military power. Rumsfeld made his remarks after talks with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf on the fourth leg of a five-nation tour to bolster support for the US drive to oust the Taleban for harboring terrorists in Afghanistan.

Musharraf said Saturday that a move by US-led forces to maintain military operations through Ramadan, which starts around Nov. 17, would have a "huge negative fallout" among Muslim states. Rumsfeld said yesterday that Washington was "sensitive" to the feelings of Islamabad and other Muslim supporters over the issue of Ramadan, but Washington could not afford a lull in the bombing. "The reality is that the threat of additional terrorist acts are there," he said. "They are credible, they are real and they offer the prospect of still thousands more people being killed."

Fierce fighting was reported in the seesawing battle between Taleban and opposition for the strategic northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif, while a new airstrip, built by anti-Taleban forces with US aid, opened for business.

Arab leaders panned the latest videotape statement by Osama Bin Laden, the chief target of the campaign to punish perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks that killed 5,000 in the United States, in which Bin Laden lashed at the United Nations on Saturday as a "criminal" organization.

Rumsfeld, arriving in Islamabad from Russia and Tajikistan via Uzbekistan, where he said the US operation was "showing measurable progress," held talks with Musharraf and was scheduled to fly on to India. At the joint press conference, Pakistani Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar said Rumsfeld and Musharraf discussed "the desirability" of ending military operations "in as short a time as possible."

An AFP reporter in Dasht-e-Qalah, near the Afghan-Tajik border, reported at least 100 explosions on Taleban positions yesterday as B-52s carpet-bombed front lines over a 50-kilometer stretch, producing immense curtains of black and gray smoke.

A Northern Alliance spokesman acknowledged that the Taleban yesterday retook a key area near Mazar-e-Sharif after almost 12 hours of fierce fighting. He said the Taleban reoccupied the eastern part of Aq-Kupruk district, 70 km south of Mazar-e-Sharif, after more than 12 hours of fighting Saturday and yesterday. He claimed 80 Taleban troops were killed, 200 were captured and 800 defected.

The Taleban ambassador in Islamabad, Abdul Salam Zaeef, confirmed they had retaken the zone, with "heaps" of dead opposition troops in the area, and denied any mass defections. Mazar-e-Sharif, near the border with Uzbekistan, where 1,000 US troops are deployed, would be a key supply and staging center for anti-Taleban forces in an eventual thrust toward Kabul and the rest of Taleban-controlled Afghanistan.

The opening yesterday of the new Sherkat airstrip, near Gulbohar at the mouth of the Panjshir Valley, some 80 km north of Kabul, could be another key source of support for a ground offensive against the Taleban. US military advisers helped build the 500-meter compacted earth and stone strip, where what appeared to be an Antonov twin-prop light transport plane landed yesterday, stayed for about 15 minutes, and took off again.

There have been no reports of US ground activity inside Afghanistan since an unsuccessful Oct. 20 commando raid on Kandahar, but CNN said special forces Saturday rescued a US serviceman who fell ill in Afghanistan. An earlier attempt to rescue the soldier failed Friday when one of two helicopters involved crash-landed in bad weather, it said.

The New Yorker magazine reported that 12 Delta Force commandos were wounded during the Oct. 20 raid on the Kandahar compound of Taleban leader Mulla Muhammad Omar. The ferocity of the Taleban response to the raid "scared the crap out of everyone," a senior military officer told the magazine.

The UN General Assembly convenes on Nov. 10 in a session focusing on Afghanistan and international terrorism and to be highlighted by US President George W. Bush’s first-ever speech Saturday before the UN General Assembly. Bush’s UN speech will be the high point of a busy diplomatic week to bolster support for his anti-terror drive and soothe nerves at home, where a bio-terror campaign that has already claimed four victims left an 18th person infected with anthrax on Saturday.

"It’s going to be a very busy week, both in talking about the home front, and in talking with members of the coalition about the progress in the war on terrorism," Bush’s National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said.

In London, key European leaders gathered yesterday for a hastily arranged summit on the war against terrorism. British Prime Minister Tony Blair briefed them at an informal dinner about his troubled Middle East foray. The Downing Street session with heads of state or government of France, Germany, Italy and Spain came ahead of Blair’s visit tomorrow to Washington where he is due to meet Bush. At the top of the agenda at the dinner-table talks was the bombing campaign against Afghanistan.

A Downing Street spokesman earlier said Blair "wanted to get together with the five major military contributors (supporting the US-led anti-terror alliance) to exchange views on the military campaign." The summit was originally to bring together only Blair, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, French President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Lionel Jospin.

But this angered Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi who had previously protested at being excluded from a "big three" meeting ahead of a routine European Union summit last month. The London gathering was then expanded to include Berlusconi and Spain’s Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar. Francesco Rutelli, head of Italy’s center-left opposition, yesterday hailed his country’s presence in London, saying he was pleased Berlusconi would be representing Italy, "one of the four great European countries."

The presence of Belgium as current president of the EU and EU foreign policy coordinator Javier Solana would also reinforce the truly European nature of the event rather than having an unacceptable "three-nation directory" decide common action against terrorism, Rutelli said.

A spokeswoman in Downing Street said earlier that talks would include Blair’s three-day diplomatic mission to the Middle East last week, when the prime minister ran into trouble trying to shore up Arab support for the coalition.

The Italian prime minister’s spokesman said that, this time, Blair "wants to inform (him) about the series of events that has prompted this meeting rather than a series of bilateral ones." Meanwhile, the government of Portugal, an EU member not invited to London, attacked the summit. "Initiatives of this type do not contribute to the anti-terrorist coalition nor to European unity," said a source close to the cabinet, reported by the Portuguese news agency Lusa. The source added: "Summits of this kind must not set a precedent for the European Union."