Alliance tightens control in Kabul

14 Nov, 2001 10:58 AM3 mins to read

KABUL - Afghan opposition forces have consolidated their hold on Kabul and say new gains mean the Taleban now hold less than 20 per cent of the country.

The Northern Alliance reported Taleban positions falling like dominoes. Four provinces in eastern Afghanistan slipped from Taleban hands after the local population rose in revolt, Alliance Interior Minister Yunis Qanuni said.

United States Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that US special forces were in southern Afghanistan and Kabul, in addition to teams helping to target the Taleban in the north.

Qanuni stopped short of saying his fighters held the areas which the Taleban no longer controlled, including the eastern city of Jalalabad - a Taleban stronghold that controls the road from Kabul to the border with Pakistan.

"We are also receiving reports of uprisings in Kandahar," he said.

The Afghan Islamic Press said last night that a mujahideen group had taken over Jalalabad.

Alliance Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah said the Taleban was no longer in control of Kandahar. "Taleban authorities are not seen in Kandahar so the people are left in an open situation," he said, adding that the situation was similar to that in Kabul a day earlier.

Opposition leaders said the fall of Kandahar could be imminent as moderates abandoned the hardliners.

As Taleban rule appeared in tatters, the regime's supreme leader, Mullah Omar, urged his scattered fighters to stand and fight.

"I order you to completely obey your commanders and not to go hither and thither," the AIP quoted him as saying to his troops in a radio address in the Pashtun language.

"Any person who goes hither and thither is like a slaughtered chicken which falls and dies. You should regroup yourselves, resist and fight," Omar said.

Alliance leader Burhanuddin Rabbani, who as Afghan President was driven from Kabul by the Taleban in 1996, said he would return to the capital today.

In Kabul, Arab and Chechen fighters loyal to Osama bin Laden had clambered into trees to fire on opposition troops.

They were shot and their bodies hung in branches or lay on the ground.

In one city park were the bloody bodies of seven black-turbaned Taleban militiamen, apparently executed with bullets to the head.

Bank notes were stuffed in their noses and ears and children spat on the corpses.

Qatar's al-Jazeera television said US warplanes bombed its offices in Kabul hours before Northern Alliance forces entered the capital.

- REUTERS

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