QUETTA, Pakistan — Taliban soldiers fled the southern Afghan city of Kandahar on Friday as the formal ground war against the fundamentalist regime drew to an end, but the surrender left what had been the last Taliban stronghold in chaos and the whereabouts of leader Mullah Mohammed Omar unknown.
U.S. Marines in the air and on the ground attacked fleeing Taliban fighters who refused to give up their weapons. In the most significant confrontation, Marines patrolling roads near Kandahar killed seven suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda soldiers and destroyed three vehicles after the drivers attempted to speed through a roadblock.
As the Taliban ceded all claims to Afghanistan on Day 62 of the war, Omar reneged on a deal to renounce terrorism in return for his freedom and hence would be hunted as a criminal, said Hamid Karzai, a Pushtun tribal leader who will become the nation's interim prime minister on Dec. 22.
"The Taliban is finished," Karzai declared. "As of today, they are no longer a part of Afghanistan."
Yet Bush administration officials who had repeatedly insisted to Karzai that Omar be "brought to justice" voiced anger that the surrender of the Taliban's birthplace occurred without his capture.
Pentagon and White House officials said they believed that the one-eyed Taliban chief remained in Kandahar but that they could not be certain. An intelligence source said the United States had no idea where Omar was.
Karzai had apparently asked only that Omar swear off terrorism and failed to ensure that the elusive Taliban chief would surrender.
"I've been asking him repeatedly to denounce terrorism and war and the suffering of the Afghan people," Karzai said. "I also asked the Taliban Cabinet yesterday that he [Omar] must distance himself clearly and denounce terrorism. I gave him a last chance. . . . From today, he is a fugitive from law, and he must be arrested and put on trial."
The Taliban also handed over the border town of Spin Buldak and the provinces of Zabol and Helmand. Yet although the Taliban's leaders have given up, many of its fighters have not. Pockets of hidden Taliban gunmen and alleged Al Qaeda terrorists remain throughout Afghanistan, Pentagon officials said.
Afghan and Pakistani Taliban fighters largely have been allowed to lay down their weapons and go home under a general amnesty that was part of the surrender agreement. But the nation's putative leader said the other foreign fighters who came to Afghanistan to wage holy war will receive no amnesty.
