By GEOFF CUMMING and AGENCIES
United States B-52 bombers have begun "carpet bombing" Taleban troops and military targets as the air strikes on Afghanistan move to a new level of intensity.
As well as "precision" strikes by more than 50 jets from American aircraft carriers, a half-dozen Air Force B1s and B52s dropped hundreds of unguided bombs in an operation known as carpet-bombing.
The raids - appearing to respond to Afghan opposition calls for heavier pounding of the Taleban frontline - follow growing doubts that an end to the military campaign is in sight.
Britain's Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, said the campaign to flush out Osama bin Laden and his supporters would continue throughout the Afghan winter.
"We will now begin the steady progress over the winter, building up to the spring of next year, of fragmenting, undermining and eventually destroying the Taleban regime," he said.
He was standing in for Prime Minister Tony Blair, who is in the Middle East to build support for an Israeli-Palestinian ceasefire.
Yesterday, after witnesses reported the heaviest raids yet against Taleban troops protecting Kabul and Mazar-e-Sharif, the Pentagon acknowledged that large loads of unguided bombs were being dropped.
Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the intensified bombing was a result of improved intelligence, partly from US special operatives on the ground with the opposition Northern Alliance.
US planes also hit the Taleban power base of Kandahar, in the southeast, in a predawn strike.
A doctor in the town told foreign reporters escorted by Taleban militia that the planes hit an International Red Crescent clinic and killed 11 people.
The Pentagon denied bombing the clinic, saying it hit only "a legitimate terrorist target".
Meanwhile, bin Laden is reported to be hiding in mountains north of Kandahar. If this is true, it would mean he is 250km to 300km from the city in an area where the peaks are more than 4000m high.
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