KABUL/QUETTA, Pakistan (Islamweb & News Agencies) - The Taliban abandoned their last stronghold of Kandahar on Friday as the militia disintegrated after weeks of pulverizing U.S. air strikes.
But as rival groups tussled over control of the city, any prospect that opposition tribal groups or the United States might collar Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar appeared uncertain at best.
A Pakistan-based news agency said he had left town and ''disappeared,'' one anti-Taliban faction said he was still in Kandahar with 1,000 followers, and the U.S. military said it did not know where he was.
Under a deal negotiated on Thursday with Hamid Karzai, designated leader of a new Afghan interim government, the Taliban in Kandahar were to turn in their guns to a group of local figures led by Mullah Naqibullah, a former anti-Soviet Mujahideen leader and military chief of Kandahar.
But one of Karzai's Pashtun tribal allies, Naqibullah's main rival for control of the town, said the deal was flawed.
``Hamid Karzai, the new prime minister, the new leader, has made a very, very wrong decision in Kandahar by himself. He did not consult the elders or anyone else,'' said Khalid Pashtoon, spokesman for former Kandahar governor Gul Agha Sherzai.
``He gave equal rights to Mullah Naqibullah which everyone opposes. The Kandahar people are very upset because the 1992 to 1995 misery was caused partly by Naqibullah,'' Pashtoon said by satellite telephone from near Kandahar airport.
Anti-Taliban forces said they had captured the main base of Osama bin Laden in the rugged Tora Bora mountains of eastern Afghanistan, but had failed to find the Saudi-born militant blamed for the September 11 attacks on the United States.
U.S. Marines on patrol from a desert airstrip in Kandahar province killed seven ``enemy forces'' overnight in their first ground attack since they seized the base almost two weeks ago. (Read photo caption below)

PHOTO CAPTION:
A U.S. Marine stands at the ready behind his weapons at Camp Rhino in southern Afghanistan during a period of heightened alert on December 7, 2001. The Taliban was surrendering Kandahar, their final bastion and birthplace, but America's two most wanted men in Afghanistan appeared to have slipped away. (Dave Martin/Pool via Reuters)