Marines plan final push

US marines have continued to build up their new base on an airstrip south of Kandahar, with thousands more reinforcements expected to arrive by the weekend to begin the final sweep against Osama bin Laden and the remnants of the Taliban command.

Overnight the marines called in Cobra helicopters and F14 Tomcat fighter-bombers to attack a column of Taliban tanks and armoured carriers heading towards the new base. Many of the vehicles are reported destroyed and the a r moured column turned back.

"We're smoking them out. They're running," President Bush said last night, adding: "And now we're going to bring them to justice." Fighting has continued in the north of the country between Taliban prisoners of war and their Northern Alliance captors in the fortress of Quia-i-Jhangi.

Reports reaching Pakistan suggest that more than 500 have been killed in a two and half days of fighting.

Four members of British special forces injured in fighting at the weekend are now back in hospital. One is said to have been in a critical condition, but he is now said to be "stable".

According to defence sources, the men are from the Special Boat Service unit stationed at Bagram airport and under US command.

It is believed their patrol may have come up against one of the many gangs of desperate al Qaeda foreign fighters marauding in the surrounding countryside.

The 500 marines from the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit now at the Dolangi airstrip, 55 miles south-west of Kandahar, are preparing for a reinforcement by thousands of US troops, including airborne forces, by the weekend. A further 500 marines will be flown in by helicopter from the assault carrier USS Pelelieu in the Arabian Sea and from the carrier USS Bataan.

Last night the US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld refused to go into details about future operations from the new base.

He said: "More are joining them. They are not an occupying force. Their purpose is to help pressure the Taliban forces in Afghanistan, to prevent Taliban and al Qaeda terrorists from moving freely about the country."

It is thought that paratroopers of the 82nd and possibly the 101 Airborne Divisions could be on their way to Afghanistan soon. The marines and the airborne troops are likely to be targeted on Kandahar, the last redoubt of the Taliban command under their founder Mullah Omar.

US intelligence now believes that Bin Laden and his bodyguards have fled to safe ground in the wild country round Kandahar or even further north-east close to Jalalabad.

The head of America's armed forces General Richard Myers said he does not believe that Bin Laden is now in much of a mood to fight. "Bin Laden seems to be concentrating on hiding," the general said.