The second week of the US-led air assault on Afghanistan's Taliban government and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida organisation began with strikes against the capital city's airport, the Taliban military academy and an artillery garrison.
Taliban officials said US warplanes also attacked targets around the cities of Mazar-e-Sharif, Kandahar, Jalalabad and Herat.
The captain of the USS Enterprise, one of the US aircraft carriers from which the air attacks on Afghanistan are being launched, said today his planes had destroyed nearly all the main targets and are now striking those that were missed.
"We're sort of in a clean up mode right now," added the captain, who cannot be identified under military rules for covering the operation. "We're finishing hitting the targets we really wanted to hit."
Since October 7, warplanes from the USS Enterprise and two other carriers have been striking al-Qaida training camps, weapons storage areas, troops, vehicles, air fields and Soviet-era military planes.
The captain said planes were "cleaning up" targets that were missed and, along the way, striking new targets that emerge with the help of the "massive intelligence lens that we're focusing on Afghanistan".
He said extreme lengths are taken to avoid civilians during bombing runs and that if a pilot has any doubts about a target, they have the "obligation to not drop the bomb".
The Taliban have said the air strikes have killed more than 100 civilians so far, however.
The Pentagon yesterday confirmed a 2,000-pound guided bomb launched by a US navy F/A-18 Hornet, intending to hit a military helicopter at Kabul airport, instead hit a residential area a mile away. The Pentagon said four people were reported killed and eight injured.
A defence department official said privately that the satellite-guided bomb went astray because someone entered one wrong digit in the target coordinates.
The Enterprise captain said fighter jets were also involved in creating a sanctuary in the sky for C-17 cargo planes dropping humanitarian aid.
There are indications, he said, that the Taliban are burning some of the aid and warning people not to go near it. But he added food was getting to people.
