TORA BORA/WASHINGTON, 17 December — Afghan forces and tribal fighters said they took the last Al-Qaeda stronghold in Tora Bora in eastern Afghanistan yesterday, capturing 25 fighters and killing more than 200, but Osama Bin Laden was not found. US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, during his visit to Afghanistan yesterday, said a top commander had been captured and around 2,000 fighters were on the run from the Tora Bora cave complex.

In the south, three US Marines were injured in an explosion at Kandahar’s airport.

After weeks of fighting and US bombing in the White Mountains, commanders declared victory in an all-out assault on the Al-Qaeda fighters loyal to Bin Laden. "This is the last day of Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan," said Muhammad Zaman, the provincial military chief. "There is no more need for American bombing. Our men have the situation under control." But, US warplanes late at night resumed bombing raids on the Tora Bora mountain region.

Smiling Afghan forces chanted "Al-Qaeda is finished! Al-Qaeda is finished!"

A cave where Alliance commanders had thought Bin Laden might be hiding was the last Al-Qaeda holdout. "There were only six people. One was killed by our forces and the others were captured," said another commander, Hazrat Ali. "A few days before today I had information he was here, but now I don’t know where he is."

Zaman earlier said several hundred routed Al-Qaeda men might be on the run toward the border with Pakistan, only a few kilometers south of the caves and tunnels of Tora Bora. He and Ali said their forces were pursuing the fleeing fighters.

"Anyone who paves the way for Al-Qaeda forces to live in the White Mountains will be given capital punishment," Ali said, adding that his fighters were searching the area "meter by meter" and would bury the Al-Qaeda dead today.

US Marines have been setting up a prisoner-of-war camp at their new base at Kandahar airport for captured Al-Qaeda forces. Marine Capt. David Romley said three Marines were wounded yesterday, one seriously, when one stepped on a land mine at the airport, where they have been checking for mines and booby traps.

Also yesterday, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld landed at Bagram airfield in the first visit by a top US official to Afghanistan since the US-led campaign began. Rumsfeld was greeted at the airport by designated Afghan Defense Minister Muhammad Fahim and sat down to talks with Hamid Karzai, who will head an interim government that takes power next week for six months.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell said yesterday Bin Laden was believed to be still alive and at large. "We don’t know where he is," he added. The assault on the White Mountains began at midday yesterday with tribal fighters marching up two parallel valleys to launch an assault from both sides on the mountain ridge where Al-Qaeda fighters were hiding.

Al-Qaeda’s only way out was to retreat through dense forest, but US B-52 bombers pounded the woods with incendiary bombs yesterday, and flames leaped from the trees. Before the assault, Afghan fighters emerged from the mountains in surrounding villages, their hair matted with dust, to stack their Kalashnikov rifles outside mud-walled mosques and celebrate Eid.

According to a report, the man who appeared in Bin Laden’s video and identified as Abu Sulaiman is still with Bin Laden.

Meanwhile, four of 13 armed Arabs holed up in a Kandahar hospital escaped early yesterday, apparently with the blessing of their guards, said the hospital’s head nurse, Ghulam Muhammad Afghan.

The guards are loyal to tribal leader Mulla Naqibullah, a fierce rival of Agha, the governor. Surgeon Muhammad Khoram said earlier that five or six of the fighters were uninjured, and most had only flesh wounds that no longer required hospital treatment. The Arabs are armed with grenades and pistols, he said.

Rumsfeld said US military forces have taken samples from an abandoned Al-Qaeda training camp southwest of Kandahar near the Marines’ Camp Rhino that are being tested for traces of chemical and biological weapons material.

Reports from Pakistan said two Saudis, a French and an Algerian are in a Peshawar hospital under high security. They were injured during US bombing in Afghanistan.