Afghanistan ( news - web sites ) (Reuters) - Taliban diehards attacked a southern Afghan town near their former stronghold of Kandahar, illustrating the dangers facing a new administration due to take over in Kabul Saturday.
A British-led multinational security force was expected to start arriving at any moment -- but with a low-key role and in limited numbers.
The new Afghan leader, Hamid Karzai, headed back to the capital Wednesday from talks in Rome with ex-King Zahir Shah.
With Osama bin Laden ( news - web sites ) still on the run, eight FBI ( news - web sites ) agents set about interrogating captured members of his al Qaeda network at a newly built detention center at Kandahar airport.
In the same region, remnants of Afghanistan's routed Taliban, bin Laden's protectors, attacked tribal fighters overnight at a town between Kandahar and Pakistan, reporters said.
A team of French journalists leaving Kandahar for Pakistan said they had been stopped by excited guards at a checkpoint before the town of Takhteh Pol.
"The guards said there was fighting all night because the Taliban attacked. They said to come back in a few hours because they had to check who was in control of the town," one of the reporters told Reuters.
U.S. planes had dropped food packets in the area, and that added to the confusion as residents scrambled to pick them up.
Driving back to Kandahar, the reporter said he saw two or three cars full of anti-Taliban commanders heading for Takhteh Pol and one car of plainclothes U.S. forces.
Twelve days after the Taliban surrendered Kandahar, birthplace of the hard-line Islamist movement, the city appears to be under the control of the new city governor, Gul Agha.
But U.S. and ethnic tribal Pashtun forces are still searching for scattered pockets of hardcore Taliban and fighters loyal to bin Laden, the man Washington accuses of masterminding the September 11 suicide attacks on the United States.
Gul Agha said Tuesday he was preparing to launch an operation against Taliban forces who had not surrendered.
"We will start an operation soon in the surrounding towns and districts and try our best to disarm the Taliban who are still there and take their vehicles, then we will move into the mountains," said Gul Agha.
A British-led multinational security force should start deploying in the Afghan capital by the weekend, diplomatic and military sources said Wednesday.