Quoting Taliban sources, the agency said Taliban troops were still facing some resistance from three Shiite factions on the outskirts of the central province of Bamiyan, which the hardline militia captured yesterday after a prolonged three-pronged offensive from the south and the east.

Former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani and opposition sources in Pakistan also confirmed the loss of Bamiyan, one of the last three opposition stongholds.

The remaining two are the province of Takhar, Shared by the Taliban and former defence minister Ahmed Shah Masood, and the far northern province of Badakhshan, which the AIP said is completely under the control of the anti-Taliban alliance.

A Taliban spokesman, Mulla Wakil Ahmed, said the Iranian war games along its borders withAfghanistan, where some 200,000 troops are said to be deployed, were a mere diversionary tactic.

``The Iranian government has a lot of domestic problems and wants to divert public attention by launching military exercises,'' Ahmed told the AIP from Taliban's headquarters in Kandahar, south-western Afghanistan.

He said Iran was responsible for the murder of its diplomats and now is unnecessarily raising a hue and cry over the issue.

``When Taliban launched their offensive on Mazar-e-Sharif through Faryab, all the foreigners left the town, but Teheran kept its diplomats there, why,'' Ahmed asked reiterating the allegations that Iranians have been actively interfering and supporting the anti-Taliban forces.

``To cover up facts, Iran is holding us responsible, and has tried to pressurise us by waging war games, but it will not deter us in anyway,'' the spokesman said, vowing to resist any Iranian ``misadventure with blood as a sacred war''.

Taliban forces now control nearly all of Afghanistan except forthe province of Badakhshan. But Taliban forces are still faced with severe opposition by Masood's forces north of Kabul, and along the strategic Salang highway that connects the capital with the north and three central Asian republics.