U.S. planes bombed targets in Afghanistan early on Friday in a fifth straight night of raids which the ruling Taliban say have killed more than 200 people. 
Weary and frightened residents in the capital Kabul reported a dozen strong explosions in the early hours of the morning. 
"There were up to five very strong explosions, I think it was about 15 km (nine miles) to the northwest of Kabul," one resident told Reuters. "Taliban fighters were firing anti-aircraft fire." 
He said a lone jet had screamed over the city. It was not immediately clear what the latest attacks had been targeting. 
"Now, there's another one, another very, very strong explosion," he added, shortly afterwards. 
"That's three more in the last few minutes, the last one I saw from the window, it was to the west of Kabul." 
Late on Thursday, up to five U.S. jets bombed areas south of the capital, apparently hitting a Taliban munitions dump, sending balls of flame into the night sky. 
The United States and Britain launched the raids on Sunday to force the Taliban to hand over Osama bin Laden, the man Washington accuses of masterminding the devastating September 11 suicide hijack attacks on the United States. 
In Washington, U.S. officials said that B-52 and B-1 bombers pounded Taliban troops, bunkers and weapons with deadly cluster and other bombs in different parts of the country on Thursday. 
Many residents have already fled cities for the relative safety of the countryside. 
"I've not been able to sleep now since the war began five nights ago," said one exhausted Kabul resident. "I am so tired." 
The Taliban, who have been sheltering Saudi-born bin Laden since the mid-1990s, have bitterly denounced the raids and called on Muslims around the world to rally to their defense. 
"When Americans enter Afghanistan, there will start the real war," the isolated government's only international envoy, Ambassador to Pakistan Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, said on Thursday. 
"America is thirsty for more bloodshed in Afghanistan," he told a news conference in Pakistan. "The number of casualties is increasing with the passage of time. This is a gift of America to the innocent people of Afghanistan." 
He said that bin Laden, who fought with the Taliban against occupying Soviet forces in the 1980s, was alive and well as was Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar. 
The eastern city of Jalalabad, long surrounded by guerrilla training camps for bin Laden's al Qaeda network, has come under particularly heavy bombardment. 
The Taliban say 15 civilians, mainly women and children, were killed when a mosque was hit in the city's Surkhrod suburb. 
They reported rescuers digging for the remains of 100 civilians feared killed after a bomb or missile hit Khoruma village, near Jalalabad. 
There was no independent confirmation of either incident. 
Residents fleeing the southern Taliban stronghold of Kandahar said Mullah Omar's 10-year-old son and stepfather had been killed in a direct hit on one of his houses. 
The Pentagon earlier said two of Omar's male relatives had been killed. Zaeef denied that. 
The bombardments have prompted an exodus of refugees toward Pakistan, many with their belongings piled hastily onto donkeys. Others crossed the rugged and porous border on camels. 
Anti-Taliban forces loyal to Afghan warlord Ismail Khan said they had captured the town of Chaghcharan, straddling a vital road linking Kabul to the western city of Herat. 
Independent confirmation was not immediately available, but losing Chaghcharan, 218 miles west of Kabul, would be a major blow to the Taliban. 
The opposition Northern Alliance said on Tuesday that a group of Taliban commanders had changed sides and closed the Bagram-Bamiyan road to their former comrades. 
The Taliban have dismissed the claim.