The ash in the campfires of Tora Bora in the heart of Afghanistan's White Mountains was still warm. Around the boxes of heavy-calibre ammunition at the mouth of one cave lay a freshly-used intravenous drip, still spattered with drops of blood.
For more than a week, Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda fighters held on desperately to their final stronghold, hiding in caves as B52s and jet fighters rained down thousands of pounds of America's most destructive weaponry on the mountains of Tora Bora.
Finally yesterday, 800 troops - bin Laden perhaps among them - surged up the steep, rocky valleys under volleys of tank and mortar fire. The broken Arab fighters could hold out no longer. They fled their caves, racing away in retreat over the high Enzeri Zur peak to the icy mountain ridges on the Pakistan border.
"There is no way for them to escape now. We have come through their caves and driven them up into the mountains," said Hazarat Ali, one of the three Pashtun commanders leading the attack. "We have captured a lot of caves and much heavy ammunition."
Within hours a ceasefire was arranged and the last of bin Laden's al-Qaeda force left in Afghanistan was given until 8a.m. local time today to give up or face a new attack.
In the valleys behind them they left a scene of devastation. High on one ridgeline in Tora Bora the tall forest was torn apart. For hundreds of yards in all directions the bark was stripped from shredded tree stumps.
Last week the forest was cover for al-Qaeda machine-gun and mortar positions. But when the mujahideen troops swept through yesterday their stone bunkers lay in ruins. Blood-stained clothes riddled with small holes lay on the dusty rubble and hung from the few remaining branches. A Toyota pick-up sat slumped in a crater torn apart by shrapnel.
To one side lay a large sheet of American metal marked "Dispenser and bomb, aircraft CBU 87B/B", the casing for the cluster bomb unit which levelled this ridgeline. A handful of desperate mujahideen soldiers scavenged for scraps of metal among the dozens of unexploded, yellow, cylindrical anti-personnel bomblets scattered across the hillside.
On a second sheet of green metal casing nearby a US soldier named Gary had scribbled his own brief marking before loading the cluster bomb into the hold of one of the B52s.
"For those whose dreams were taken," he wrote, "here are a few nightmares. This is gonna shine like a diamond in a goat's ass."
By lunchtime yesterday Commander Ali stood with a broad grin by a small brick hut close to the devastated ridge.
"We have captured the top of the mountain and told the Arabs to surrender. They are surrounded on four sides," he said. "We will continue to fight them, to kill them and to capture them. Now we don't need any more American bombs. This is how guerrilla war works: sometimes it is easy, sometimes it is difficult."
Of bin Laden himself, however, there was no sign. America's main objective of war - taking the Saudi terrorist, as President Bush famously put it, either alive or dead - is as elusive now as it was on September 11th.
Mujahideen soldiers said villagers believed he often stayed at the command centre. One soldier said the Saudi dissident was seen on Monday by local scouts. Senior mujahideen commanders, keen for continued US military support, insist he is still close by. "He is here. I am 100 per cent certain of that," said Commander Ali. "We have intelligence reports that up to yesterday he was in this area."
Bin Laden has several escape routes from the mountains. Some tracks lead west back into central Afghanistan. Others lead south through the snowbound Kharoti Pass into Pakistan's Khurram area, where 8,000 to 9,000 army and paramilitary troops are now deployed along the border to prevent any al-Qaeda fighters sneaking across.
Few expect bin Laden's loyalists to walk down the valleys of Tora Bora with their hands above their heads. Before yesterday, the al-Qaeda fighters, who are thought to number at least 700, had given little sign that they were willing to surrender as easily as the now defunct Taliban regime, which had been their host for five years.
As for the Americans, Commander Ali was reluctant to admit the role of the dozen US special forces troops who have been living in an abandoned school close to the frontline for the past week, driving to the front every day in a green, four-wheel drive with tinted windows, ordering in air strikes and last night making raids on al-Qaeda positions. "The American soldiers are in my pocket," he said, grinning.
For several hours in the morning his mujahideen troops faced stiff resistance high up the valley as they pressed forward. But by lunchtime the positions were overrun and mujahideen commanders called a ceasefire as they negotiated with their Arab counterparts over the radio.
"We will stop fighting for 30 minutes, don't fire your guns," Mohammad Zaman, another of the commanders, told his troops over the radio. "The Arabs will send a delegation to meet us. They said because it is Ramadan they want to end this without more fighting."
Following brief discussions al-Qaeda fighters were ordered to surrender. Commander Zaman said fighters who gave themselves up would face international prosecution.
The battle for Tora Bora, although fierce, left few al-Qaeda casualties. Their huts and gun positions were destroyed but nearly all the fighters managed to escape.
Even the bombing seems to have claimed few lives. The caves are still intact and would have provided sanctuary during the B52 raids. Most of the caves were built by the mujahideen during the 1980s war against the Soviet invasion.
A dusty, unmade track led down from the ridge to the bottom of the valley where a muddy river trickled by the entrance to the first of the caves.
By a path above the river tall slits, barely a metre wide, had been carved out of the rock and protected with sandbags and boxes of machine-gun shells and 82mm mortars. In the corner a small dark hole led inside to a pitch-black cavernous space, almost certainly still protected by hidden mines and booby traps.
"We saw ammunition inside and blankets, mattresses and pillows," said Naseem, one of the first mujahideen soldiers to reach the caves yesterday. "They had a mortar position here at the front and every time the American aircraft came they ran inside the cave for cover. There are more caves either side of this one."
As idle mujahideen soldiers boasted of their victory the first al-Qaeda casualties were carried down the hillside. The bodies of two men had been carried from the sniper's nest, ordered to remain at their posts on the day that bin Laden's fighters fled from Tora Bora.