KABUL, Afghanistan — Weary Afghans loaded belongings into trucks and carts Friday and left the capital, fearing U.S. airstrikes after their Taliban rulers rejected American demands to hand over alleged terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden.

``Out of 20 homes on our street most of the families have left,'' said Mohammed Hussein as he piled his family's things into a pickup truck to join relatives in Logar province south of Kabul, the capital. ``Anyone who can is leaving.''

On a main road leading north out of Kabul, Azizullah — who like many Afghans, uses only one name — pushed a cart filled with pots and pans, a trunk and a few tattered carpets. His two daughters were pale and weak from dysentery. His 12-year-old boy, Hamidullah, pushed a smaller cart loaded with some mattresses and pillows.

His wife, Azizullah said, stayed home because she suffers from rheumatism and cannot walk.

``I don't know where to go,'' he said. ``I've been wandering the city trying to find a safe spot. But I have no money and I don't know what to do. Our home is near a military base, and I don't want to stay there with my children.''

Tensions rose in this capital — devastated by 23 years of civil war — after President Bush warned the Taliban to hand over bin Laden and his chief lieutenants or ``share in their fate.''

Addressing a joint session of Congress, Bush also demanded the Taliban give the United States full access to terrorist training camps and release imprisoned U.S. aid workers, saying the demands were not negotiable. Bush told U.S. military forces to be ready for war.

The Taliban rejected the demands.

``There has been no change in our stand toward Osama,'' the Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef, said in Islamabad. ``It would be an insult to Islam and its laws if bin Laden is handed over to the United States or forcibly expelled from Afghanistan.''

Zaeef insisted that the United States has provided no credible evidence that bin Laden was behind the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Muslim religious leaders took advantage of traditional Friday religious services to prepare the Afghan people for war. Speakers in many mosques reminded the faithful how Afghan fighters had driven the Soviet army from their country and vowed to do the same to the Americans.

``The Americans are using the name of bin Laden as an excuse to attack our country,'' a Muslim leader, Mohammed Nawab Haideri, told about 8,000 Shiite Muslims at a mosque in Dashat-e-Barchi, a western neighborhood of Kabul.

Haideri said all Afghans hoped ``America won't attack this poor country'' but if they did, ``all Muslims are ready for jihad,'' or holy war.

Over the past week, thousands of people are believed to have headed for neighboring countries, including Iran and Pakistan. Both countries, which have taken in millions of Afghans fleeing civil war and drought, have closed their borders to more refugees.

``This city weeps,'' said Dil Agha, a Kabul merchant who stayed behind. ``We are blamed for whatever happens in the world. I wonder how many sins we have committed that God won't listen to our prayers anymore.''