As American planes continued to bomb Afghanistan, US president George W Bush yesterday rejected a Taliban offer to hand Osama bin Laden in return for a halt to the military action.

The offer had been made by deputy prime minister Haji Abdul Kabir, the third most powerful person in the Taliban regime. However, the conditions for the surrender - that the US must produce evidence of bin Laden's guilt and that he should be surrendered to a third country - were dismissed by Bush.

"There's no negotiating, period" he said last night.

In a sign of the importance attached to winning the propaganda battle, the Taliban has also lifted some restrictions on foreign journalists entering Afghanistan in a bid to gain increased coverage of their claims of civilian deaths.

Reporters are being invited to join tours of areas where civilians are said to have been killed. The Taliban move came as the US admitted a 2000-pound bomb missed its target at Kabul airport and hit a residential area of the city instead.