KABUL/CHAMAN, Pakistan (Reuters) - U.S. bombing and tribal warriors racked up pressure on the Taliban's last bastion of Kandahar on Saturday as anti-Taliban factions pursued efforts to complete a power-sharing deal at talks in Germany.
The Taliban said their fighters had shot down a U.S. warplane near Kandahar airport. The U.S. military denied the claim.
Witnesses said U.S. warplanes had unleashed a withering bombardment of Taliban targets around Kandahar as tribal fighters and U.S. Marines dug in within striking distance of the city.
Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar vowed never to surrender, telling his forces to die with dignity rather than live with humiliation, the Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) quoted a Taliban official as saying.
``Mullah Omar has advised and instructed everyone to fight to the death and not to bow down in front of brutality and blasphemy,'' Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, was quoted as saying.
Witnesses arriving at the Pakistani border at Chaman said U.S. B-52 bombers mounted heavy raids through the night around Kandahar and the border smugglers' town of Spin Boldak. Two U.S. bombers could be seen high overhead, heading toward Kandahar.
AIP quoted Zaeef as saying Taliban fighters had shot down a U.S. plane in the afternoon during heavy bombardment of Kandahar airport. ``The plane fell almost two km south of the airport and American planes kept on bombing (the airport),'' he said.
The U.S. military denied the report. ``All of our aircraft are accounted for,'' Marine Corps Major Ralph Mills, spokesman for the U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Florida, told Reuters.
Zaeef also said at least 30 civilians had been killed when U.S. bombs hit four trucks and five small buses between Kandahar and Spin Boldak. There was no independent confirmation.