The Taliban militia held on precariously in their southern Afghan powerbase today after a week of losses at the hands of opposition and foreign forces aligned against them in the US-led war on terrorism.
"We have thousands of troops in Kandahar and in the provinces around it and we have decided to fight to retain control of them to maintain Islamic rule," a Taliban spokesman said, dismissing reports that Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar would withdraw from the city to avoid bloodshed.
The defiance came at the end of a week of rapidly unfolding action which saw the Taliban withdraw from the capital Kabul amid US air strikes and a lightning advance by the opposition Northern Alliance.
Their hold on the country has shrunk from more than 90 per cent to about a third.
But the speed of events left international players struggling to forge a broad-based coalition to fill the power vacuum in the Central Asian country. At week's end, fresh divisions appeared in the factions opposing them.
Osama Bin Laden is still in the country but exactly where was unknown, the Taliban ambassador to Pakistan said.
"Osama is inside Afghanistan but I don't know whether he is in our (Taliban) territory or the area controlled by the Northern Alliance," Zaeef told reporters after crossing the border into Pakistan following a visit to Kandahar.
Qatar's al-Jazeera satellite television said earlier that bin Laden had left the country for an unknown destination but later corrected the report.
Taliban spokesman Tayeb al-Agha, said the militia would fight to retain control of Kandahar.
Speaking to al-Jazeera television, he dismissed as "lies" reports by the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) news agency that Omar was planning to abandon the city and hand it over to two local commanders to prevent further bloodshed.
Aside from Kandahar, the only major Taliban bastion left is the northern province and city of Kunduz. The opposition said thousands of Pakistani, Arab and Chechen fighters under siege in the enclave were fighting to the death, aware they had nowhere to run.
"We have surrounded the Kunduz province but unfortunately we have not captured it yet," said a Northern Alliance Foreign Ministry official.