U.S.-led forces have launched a sweeping new offensive in Afghanistan's remote southern and eastern mountains aimed at crushing the Taliban and al Qaeda and snaring militant leaders including Osama bin Laden.

Operation "Mountain Storm" was given additional significance by concerns al Qaeda could be behind Thursday's bomb attacks on Madrid trains that killed 200 people. Spain's government, however, insists the blasts were the work of Basque separatists.

U.S. military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Bryan Hilferty told a Kabul news briefing on Saturday the offensive had begun on March 7 and involved troops from the 13,500-strong U.S.-led force backed by air support.

It is unlikely bin Laden would be directly involved in detailed planning of any specific operation in western Europe, but he is considered the key figure of authority in al Qaeda.

The senior military commander for Afghanistan's southern region, General Haji Granai, told Reuters U.S. aircraft attacked a truck carrying 12 suspected Taliban guerrillas in Maruf district of Kandahar province on Thursday, killing all of them.

Hilferty said he had no information on such an attack, though he told the briefing U.S. forces had carried out a small-scale air assault in the south which he declined to detail.

The campaign comes after a surge in militant attacks on aid workers and Afghan government and U.S.-led forces and ahead of presidential elections supposed to held in June.

On Saturday night, a blast was heard in the capital Kabul. Police said they appeared to have been caused by a rocket that exploded in the air, not on the ground, causing no casualties

U.S. defense officials told Reuters in Washington on Friday that "Mountain Storm" was timed to exploit improving weather in the region between Afghanistan and Pakistan, where bin Laden he is believed to be.

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A Taliban spokesman said U.S. forces had launched offensives from the Waza Khuwa region of Paktika province to the Yakubi region of neighboring Khost province. But he said the elusive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, who headed its government that harbored the al Qaeda network, was safe.

U.S. officials said the secretive Task Force 121, a covert commando team of Special Operations troops and CIA personnel involved in the capture of Saddam Hussein in Iraq in December, has relocated people and equipment to the border region.

Pakistan has in recent weeks moved forces into the lawless tribal lands on its side of the Afghan border in the search for militants.

In Pakistan's South Waziristan region bordering Afghanistan, tribal elders gave 24 hours to anyone harboring al Qaeda and other militants to surrender, saying that if they failed to do so they would pursue them with a 600-man tribal militia.

U.S.-led forces toppled the Taliban in late 2001 after the September 11, 2001 attacks, which are blamed on al Qaeda.