US aircraft bombed Taliban and al-Qaeda cave hideouts in eastern Afghanistan today as hundreds of Afghan fighters and a number of tanks gathered at the battle's front line.
After more than a week of fighting in the biggest US-led battle of the five-month Afghan war, the reinforcements gathered near Shahi Kot, about 95 miles south of Kabul in Paktia province, close to the Pakistani border.
A senior Afghan military official said Taliban-al Qaeda rebels had also regrouped in four eastern provinces, including Wardak, Khost, Ghazni and other locations in Paktia province.
He said thousands of government troops were already on the way to the areas to head off trouble. "We have intelligence that remnants of the Taliban and al-Qaeda are armed and still active in these [four] regions," the official told Reuters.
At Bagram air base near Kabul, control point for the battle, a US military spokesman said there were about, 1,000 Afghan troops at the front line.
He said although about 600 US soldiers had been withdrawn, another 1,000 remained in the combat area.
In Washington, Defense Secretary Mr Donald Rumsfeld said despite the limited pull-out, the US military remained in charge of "Operation Anaconda", aimed at overcoming al-Qaeda guerrillas in a rugged Afghan mountain battlefield stretching over 60 square miles.
Mr Rumsfeld said the military hoped the battle, which also involved a number of allied nations, would end sometime this week.