It was an incongruous day in Afghanistan, but perhaps that is business as usual here, given a country known largely for its traditions of unrivalled hospitality and bloodshed.
In Tora Bora near the city of Jalalabad, US B-52 bombers unleashed a massive aerial bombardment that sent huge plumes of smoke up from the peaks where Osama bin Laden is thought to be holed up in a network of caves.
In Kandahar in the south, the incoming head of the interim government sought to bring warring tribal chiefs together in an effort to bring calm to the streets. And in the capital city of Kabul, a cloudless blue sky and warm temperatures brought out thousands, who flocked to the World Food Programme's largest food distribution here to date.
For the Americans and the Northern Alliance fighters, the formidable terrain of Tora Bora kept its secrets for yet another day. Afghan tribal fighters armed with assault rifles arrived in pick-up trucks at the front line in the snow-capped White Mountains to join the battle.
"It's a hundred per cent sure he is here," commander Haji Mohammad Zaman, whose troops are leading the assault, claimed.
Another Northern Alliance commander reported that bin Laden had been seen leading a contingent of 1,000 men out of Tora Bora into the forests on horseback.
But the American warplanes remained focused on the elaborate system of underground caves that are reported to have their own air supply and hidden entrances.
In Kabul, the UN sent a seven-member team to prepare a peacekeeping force to oversee the arrival in power of the new government.
With winter coming, the World Food Programme spent much of the weekend distributing bags of wheat around Kabul. Crowds gathered at various distribution points, clouds of blue burkas bobbing up and down as throngs of women sought supplies for their children. According to the UN, some 70 per cent of the population here suffers from malnutrition, with people subsisting largely on bread, tea, potatoes and onions.
"Winter is coming and I am worried," said Miliha, a nurse at the Karte Surgical Hospital. "The Taliban should surrender peacefully in Kandahar. I am worried about the new government, too - some of them have a bad history. But the UN has nominated them and we have many expectations and hope."
Mr Hamid Karzai, the interim prime minister designated at the Bonn meetings last week, arrived in Kandahar in a bid to settle a dispute over the town between two anti-Taliban leaders.
Mr Karzai has been working to bring two rival local leaders - Mullah Naqibullah and Gul Agha - to the negotiating table and set up a power-sharing council to administer the province.
Mr Karzai brokered a deal late last week to ensure a handover of the Taliban's headquarters to Naqibullah, but the agreement has angered Mr Agha, who has since occupied his former official residence in the city.
The concern in the West is that a vacuum of authority in Kandahar and elsewhere will lead to the kind of lawlessness that allowed the Taliban to flourish in the first place.
Armed men, including US Special Forces, were seen roaming the streets of the disputed city over the weekend. But despite initial reports of his capture, the Taliban's supreme leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, appeared to have escaped.
Elsewhere, on Afghanistan's northern border, Uzbek officials opened a bridge crossing for the first time in four years, allowing in a goods train loaded with humanitarian supplies. And 21 people, including senior members of the Northern Alliance, were killed in a helicopter crash in north-eastern Takhar province