"We're confident that we're not dependent upon any particular single thread, and we can continue to supply the Afghanistan effort," Ashton Carter, undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, told Reuters.

More strains have emerged in already fragile US-Pakistan ties after US forces killed Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden at a compound near Islamabad, prompting some concerns about the US military's ability to get supplies to troops fighting in land-locked country of Afghanistan.

In an interview, Carter downplayed those concerns, noting that the US military's logistics operation was developed to deal with unexpected hurdles such as devastating floods throughout Pakistan last year.

"You've seen when the volcano hit, when the floods in Pakistan hit, when Haiti happened, that our logistics system was resilient enough and had enough diversity that we could shift load from one mode to another," Carter said.

Meanwhile, hundreds of Taleban rallied in a Pakistani tribal town on Monday, condemning the killing of Bin Laden and vowing to avenge the Al-Qaeda chief's death, officials said.

Chanting slogans denouncing Pakistan and the United States, the protesters gathered in Wana, the main town in South Waziristan where they forced the market to close and then held a meeting in a nearby madrassa, they said.

It was the first pro-Bin Laden demonstration in the tribal belt, which Washington has called a headquarters of Al-Qaeda.

The protesters, believed to be more than 500, were mostly supporters or members of Pakistani Taleban commander Maulvi Nazir's group, which supports Afghan Taleban, officials said.

A small number of local people also participated, they added.

"Osama Bin Laden was our leader. We are his followers and we will continue to pursue his movement," pro-Taleban cleric Maulvi Ibrahim told the gathering. "We will take revenge from Pakistan and America. We have already started it and recent attacks in Kandahar and other places in Afghanistan were to avenge of his martyrdom," he said.

In another development, five civilians including two children died in a suicide bombing near a government office in Afghanistan Monday as security forces elsewhere finally ended a 36-hour Taleban stand-off in a major city.

The deaths came in Laghman province, east of the capital Kabul, when a suicide bomber targeted NATO and Afghan troops as they returned from meeting local leaders. The Taleban claimed responsibility for the attack which did not kill any soldiers.

In the city of Kandahar, life was returning to normal after troops late Sunday killed the final member of a heavily-armed 28-man Taleban cell which launched a wave of attacks on government targets over the weekend.

President Hamid Karzai issued a condemnation of all recent attacks, saying they showed the “desperation” of the Taleban, who he accused of “trying to hide their defeats by killing innocent people.”

The blast in Laghman took place close to the district government compound in Qarghayi district.

“Five civilians were killed and another five civilians were wounded in the suicide attack today,” provincial spokesman Faizanullah Pattan said. He added that two of the dead were schoolchildren and the other three were youths looking for work.