WASHINGTON/KABUL, 15 January — US heavy bombers pounded a former Al-Qaeda base to rubble yesterday amid signs that Osama Bin Laden’s fighters might still be there, as the United Nations called for urgent assistance to pull war-scarred Afghanistan back from the brink of bankruptcy.

"There may have been some people showing up there," Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said, referring to the Zhawar Kili area of eastern Afghanistan, which has been under constant US air attack since Jan. 3. "Targets were buildings, camps and cave openings," which, by one estimate, covered a 4.8 square-kilometer area hit by B-1 and B-52 heavy bombers and FA-18 fighters planes over the weekend, Clarke said.

The Afghan Islamic Press agency, quoting residents in the Pakistani town of Miran Shah, just across the border from Zhawar, said US raids continued overnight into yesterday. The people of Miran Shah are complaining of sleepless nights because of the raids that began on Jan. 3, when US forces first saw signs of Al-Qaeda fighters returning to the area, AIP said.

US ground troops scouring the zone say they have found heavy weapons and an unexpectedly large network of tunnels, bunkers and buildings — although Bin Laden and his erstwhile protector, Taleban leader Mulla Omar, remained at large.

An Afghan deputy minister said influential Pashtuns, including government members, are partly responsible for Omar continuing to elude capture. Faizullah Jalal, No. 2 in the Ministry of Higher Education and a noted academic and analyst, told AFP he believes interim leader Hamid Karzai is himself undecided about Omar’s fate.

The Karzai administration is in dire financial straits, a spokesman for UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi said, with the national kitty now at less than $10 million. "This administration needs several million dollars tomorrow, otherwise there will be no country when the billions are available," spokesman Ahmed Fawzi said.

A spokesman for the US Central Command, which coordinates the US campaign in Afghanistan from Tampa, Florida, said 30 "unlawful combatants" were on a US C-17 cargo that left Kandahar on Sunday night on a 27-hour flight to Guantanamo. "The preparations were exactly the same as for the first flight," he said, with the prisoners shackled, hooded and each escorted by two US soldiers.

A group of 30 prisoners held at Kandahar airport was en route to a US military prison at Guantanamo, Cuba, but the legal proceedings they will face remained sketchy as best. Pakistan, seeking to ease regional tensions amid a military standoff with India in Kashmir, reopened its Kabul embassy, closed in November when US-backed Northern Alliance forces chased away the Islamabad-backed Taleban.