Alliance warriors march into capital

13 Nov, 2001 06:40 PM5 mins to read

KABUL - Northern Alliance troops entered Kabul yesterday to the sound of small-arms fire.

Reuters and BBC correspondents inside the Afghan capital said the Taleban were falling back on their stronghold of Kandahar in the south.

Even there they were under pressure, with reports that the strategic airport outside their powerbase had fallen.

The Reuters reporter in Kabul said the first Northern Alliance troops entered the city at daybreak in defiance of the United States, which wanted them to wait until there was agreement on the shape of a post-Taleban government for Afghanistan.

Dazed residents emerged from their homes to see Taleban bodies on the streets and looters plundering Government offices.

"We have taken Kabul," shouted one jubilant opposition fighter as he stood with a group of fellow fighters on a street in the city centre.

"We are chasing the Taleban to the west," yelled another.

Sporadic small-arms fire clattered in pockets of the city as the Northern Alliance entered.

The BBC reported that large crowds gathered to cheer the advancing troops, shouting "Death to the Taleban" and "Death to Pakistan".

It said the Taleban appeared to have taken away the contents of Kabul's money markets and the national bank.

The first troops were followed by opposition defence minister Mohammad Fahim and foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah in a black Landcruiser.

They led a column of armed military police in dark-green uniforms.

Behind them moved hundreds of Northern Alliance fighters, dressed in camouflage and carrying Kalashnikovs and rocket launchers.

Further south, a number of sources claimed that Kandahar airport had fallen.

"It's confirmed from tribal leaders," said Mohammad Yusaf Pashtun, spokesman for the former Mujahideen Governor of Kandahar, Gul Agha.

"They don't know who took it," he added.

"Kandahar airport has fallen into the hands of the Northern Alliance," Qatar's al-Jazeera television said in an unsourced report without further details.

Buoyed by the lightning capture of about 40 per cent of the country over the weekend and more than a month of blistering US air strikes on the Taleban, the Northern Alliance broke through Taleban frontlines outside Kabul on Monday backed by US bombing and a fierce artillery barrage.

A team of US special forces dressed in civilian clothes and carrying M-16 assault rifles landed by helicopter at Bagram airbase north of the city soon after it was taken.

Equipment was unloaded from the helicopter before it left, taking away four of the special forces troops and leaving two behind.

The special forces are believed to have coordinated the Northern Alliance blitzkrieg since Friday.

After darkness fell, tanks, cars and battered Japanese pickups packed with Taleban were seen leaving the capital on the highway leading west and south to Kandahar.

A prison guard said Taleban officials forced eight foreign aid workers to go with them as they fled Kabul.

The two American women, two Australians and four Germans are accused of spreading Christianity.

The small-arms fire still heard in some parts of the capital apparently came from Taleban fighters who had not managed to flee or had chosen to make a last stand.

Several bodies of Taleban soldiers, distinguished by their mandatory black turbans, lay sprawled on streets.

Among the dead were a couple of the much-feared foreign fighters, usually Arabs, Pakistanis or Chechens, who make up the backbone of the al-Qaeda terrorist network of Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden.

Many Kabul residents were nervous. Several houses were robbed in the night as law and order began to break down.

As dawn broke and the night-time curfew imposed by the Taleban ended, residents of one of the most impoverished and war-ravaged capitals on Earth plundered Government offices in a looting spree.

Residents said some prisoners had also broken out of jails in the city.

The US has backed the Northern Alliance against the Taleban to punish the regime for harbouring bin Laden, prime suspect in the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

The alliance is deeply unpopular among Kabul's mainly Pashtun population because of power struggles among opposition leaders in the 1990s that unleashed almost daily rocket attacks on the city and killed 50,000 residents.

The US had wanted a broad agreement on the structure of any post-Taleban government before the Northern Alliance entered Kabul.

But there have been few signs of progress on such a deal.

The United Nations has said it wants an urgent meeting of Afghan leaders to discuss the country's political future.

After taking the strategic northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif on Friday, the Northern Alliance made lightning gains across the country, taking most of the north and claiming the capture of the western city of Herat.

Opposition spokesman Ashraf Nadeem said forces of veteran opposition commander Ismail Khan had taken Herat and were marching towards Kandahar, powerbase of Taleban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.

But the Taleban said they were still in control of Herat and were launching a counterattack in other parts of the country.

Taleban Foreign Ministry official Aziz Al-Rahman Abdul Ahad told al-Jazeera television that the Taleban retreat from some areas was a deliberate strategy.

But tribal leader Hamid Karzai, on a mission to central and southern Afghanistan to try to persuade local chieftains to back the return of former monarch Zahir Shah as head of a new government, said many in the south were ready to abandon the Taleban.

"We are not planning any military action here. I hope we can resolve this without war. The civilian population is with us."

- REUTERS

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