Taliban fighters stood defiant in their southern Afghan stronghold of Kandahar today and were said to be under siege in the northern city of Kunduz.
A spokesman for leader Mullah Mohammed Omar insisted today Taliban forces "are in good position - we don't see any problem".
Mohammed Taher Agha said the Taliban were not ready to accept that their rule of Afghanistan was over.
He also denied Pentagon reports that some senior Taliban figures had been killed in US air attacks or captured by the Northern Alliance, calling them "baseless".
A US official claimed today opposition forces had captured some senior leaders of the Taliban and the al-Qaida terrorist network.
Osama bin Laden and Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar are still at large, vowing a fight to the death, and the Afghan opposition remains divided.
Iran Radio reported that bin Laden had fled Afghanistan to Pakistan. The station, quoting an informed source, said he had escaped across the border near Tirah, southwest of Peshawar.
Over 100 British troops have arrived at Bagram airport near Kabul for what they described as a humanitarian function.
However, the Northern Alliance has reacted angrily, saying it was not consulted before the troops arrived and suggested they should be recalled immediately.
The fate of the southern city of Kandahar, stronghold of the Taliban, remains unclear. The opposition said it had taken the airport and there was chaos in the streets.
Opposition tribal leaders claimed the people of Kandahar were turning on the Taliban. But Taliban officials discounted the claims, saying there was no fighting in Kandahar.
In Kunduz, last bastion of the Taliban in the north, thousands of fighters - many of them Pakistanis, Arabs and Chechens - are under siege, the opposition said.
"There are 20,000 Taliban in Kunduz, many of them Arabs, and they are trying to break out," said one Northern Alliance defence official. "They are desperate, they've seen what happens to Arabs when the Northern Alliance gets hold of them."
The United States estimated there were around 2,000 to 3,000 hard core Taliban fighters in Kunduz.
Factions in the Northern Alliance have already split the capital along ethnic lines - a sign Kabul could be reverting to the divisions that sparked civil war when the same groups took over from the Soviet-installed government in 1992. The power struggles sparked almost daily rocket attacks on the city and killed some 50,000 Kabul residents.