Haji Pir Mohammad, deputy governor of the southwestern province of Helmand, said he led a six-member team to the Baghran valley where local officials and villagers had reported the deaths of at least 17 people including women and children since the bombardment began on Sunday.

Mohammad told Reuters he had seen dead bodies, but he could not say whether they were members of the Taliban or civilians.

"I can't say how many people were killed because the area is covered with snow and it has high mountains, there could be dead bodies under the snow," he said by phone from the provincial capital Lashkargah.

U.S. military officials have said there was no evidence of any civilian deaths and reiterated that there could up to 100 fighters linked with the Taliban hiding in caves in the Baghran valley where an ambush of U.S. Special Forces this week triggered the latest bombing raids.

"There have been no reports of civilian or coalition casualties based upon the searches that were done yesterday," U.S. military spokesman Colonel Roger King told reporters at the coalition headquarters in Bagram, north of Kabul.

In a pre-dawn raid on Friday, an AC-130 gunship, B-1 bomber and A-10 aircraft destroyed three caves in the Baghran valley where the militants were believed holed up.

King said there could be 30 to 100 suspected enemy fighters in the area in what could be the biggest concentration since a group of rebels was attacked near the Spin Boldak mountains in neighboring Kandahar province late last month.

"It is a relatively long valley, who knows, there may be more somewhere else," King said.

There has been an increase in rebel activity in recent weeks in southern Afghanistan.

U.S. military officials say a war on Iraq could trigger militant strikes in Afghanistan where thousands of international troops are hunting remnants of the Taliban and al Qaeda, blamed by Washington for the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

Earlier on Friday suspected Taliban remnants fired two rockets into the southern Afghan town of Spin Boldak which is near the border with Pakistan, but there were no casualties.

A third rocket landed near a Pakistani border post, an Afghan security official said.

He said Taliban members could have been responsible for the attack.

Late last month, U.S.-led coalition forces pursuing remnants of the fundamentalist Taliban regime and their allies from the al Qaeda network launched a major attack on a cave complex in a mountain area northeast of Spin Boldak.