US-led forces have resumed bombing the Afghan capital of Kabul. This afternoon US warplanes attacked the Taliban frontlines to the north of the city.
The Taliban claimed today that dozens of patients were killed when bombs dropped during a US air raid hit a hospital in the eastern Afghan city of Herat.
During last night's raids on the 100-bed Herat hospital between 50 and 70 people were killed, information ministry official Abdul Hanan Himat said, adding that all medical equipment and facilities at the hospital were destroyed.
The accusation could not be independently confirmed.
The US Defence Secretary Mr Donald Rumsfeld said this evening there was no evidence to support the Taliban claims, and he is sure it was inaccurate.
But the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff said they were trying to find out what happened.
"We are not quite as certain about that yet so we are going to continue to look," said General Richard Myers. "We don't have the evidence yet so we will spend some time to figure out what the truth is, if we can do that."
The British Ministry of Defence dismissed claims its warplanes had been involved in the attack on the hospital.
"No British strike aircraft is involved in the current operation in Afghanistan, so none could have taken part in the alleged attack," said an MoD spokesman.
The Taliban also accused US-led forces of using chemical and biological weapons.
"Today in my contact with doctors in Herat and Kandahar, they told me that they have found signs that Americans are using biological and chemical weapons in their attacks," Taliban information ministry spokesman Mr Abdul Hanan Himat said.
"The effects are transparent on the wounded; a state of poisonousness is one of them," he said.
Mr Himat said overnight attacks on Tarin Kot, located north of Kandahar, killed 18 civilians and wounded 25 to 35.
The Taliban have also said they have discovered pieces of a US helicopter that may have taken part in the weekend ground attack near the southern city of Kandahar, the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Presssaid.
"Right now I have been informed by Amirul Monineen [Mullah Mohammad Omar's] office that they have discovered pieces of an American helicopter in Baba Sahib hills . . . some burnt tires and parts and traces of blood," AIP quoted the Taliban consul in Peshawar as saying.
The United States said two servicemen were killed when their helicopter crashed in an accident in Pakistan during the first ground raid of the campaign at about midnight on Friday.