Afghanistan, Nov 6?Afghanistan's Taliban rulers paraded what they said were parts of a downed U.S. helicopter through the streets of war-shattered Kabul on Tuesday in a show of defiance on the 31st day of Washington's air assault.
After dark a U.S. warplane fired two missiles into central Kabul sending up a column of smoke and dust behind a school.
"There was a bang, a whizzing sound and then another explosion," said Reuters correspondent Sayed Salahuddin.
Earlier, U.S. planes attacked Taliban guns bearing down on an opposition-held airfield north of the capital and the opposition claimed a battlefield victory near the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif.
"Their attack here will soon share the fate of this aircraft," a Taliban fighter shouted through a loudspeaker as the wreckage was driven through Kabul.
"Don't worry we will defeat the Americans and their allies," he said.
Thousands of residents came out onto the street to see the metal parts and two tyres, mounted on the back of a vehicle.
A Taliban official told Reuters the helicopter was shot down in Ghazni province on Saturday.
The Pentagon has denied an aircraft was downed. It said bad weather forced a helicopter to crash. All crew were rescued and the craft destroyed by fighter jets to prevent the Taliban taking sensitive equipment.

To the north of Kabul, U.S. fighter planes targeted tanks and artillery overlooking Bagram airbase, which is held by opposition Northern Alliance forces.
Ten explosions could be seen around Kubacha and Mirsambat in the morning as warplanes flew high above the Shomali plain for about an hour.
An Alliance commander welcomed the use of B-52 heavy bombers to pound strips of ground and carpet-bomb small areas, but Taliban reinforcements have been reported arriving at the front in their hundreds almost every day.
Washington appears to be putting pressure on the Alliance to seize the initiative and take some territory from the Taliban, but the army is ill equipped for an all-out offensive and there have been few real signs of an impending push.
The Northern Alliance Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah said his forces north of Kabul were ready but he did not say when an offensive would start.
"We don't need more time in order to be more prepared militarily," he told the BBC.
An opposition commander said forces had won ground in a slow-moving campaign to recapture Mazar-i-Sharif. But they were bogged down near the western city of Herat against entrenched Taliban positions.
"Our forces have captured upper and lower Keshendeh villages in today's fighting," Ustad Muhakik, one of three veteran commanders battling to take Mazar-i-Sharif, told Reuters.
Keshendeh lies 40 km (25 miles) south of Mazar-i-Sharif. The area has changed hands several times since May in clashes between the Taliban and forces loyal to General Abdul Rashid Dostum.
Muhakik said 400 Taliban had defected to Alliance forces who recovered a large amount of Taliban weapons and ammunition.
The opposition has tried to take Mazar-i-Sharif and sever Taliban supply lines to western Afghanistan and central Asia.
The Pakistani-based Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) agency said five people were killed in the fighting in Zari Bazar in northern Balkh province. There was no independent confirmation.
said U.S. bombing had killed a total 633 civilians and wounded up to 1,000 in the first 29 days of the campaign.
The Taliban have said 1,500 civilians have been killed. The United States rejects Taliban civilian casualty figures as exaggerated.

The Pentagon has brought in Vietnam-era B-52 bombers to carpet-bomb Taliban front lines. U.S. media reported this week the air force had also dropped the biggest bomb in its arsenal, the 15,000-pound "Daisy Cutter."
The bomb, which is the size of a small car, was used in the Vietnam war to clear ground for helicopters. The Pentagon has refused to confirm or deny the reports.
The United States has troops on the ground directing the bombing and the Pentagon says it believes a substantial number of Taliban have been killed.
The Pentagon said the bombing had driven Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda guerrillas into hiding. The U.S. began bombing Afghanistan on October 7 to punish the Taliban for sheltering the Saudi-born leader, prime suspect in the September 11 attacks on the United States that killed some 4,800 people.