Northern Alliance says it killed 500 in school

16 Nov, 2001 02:44 AM3 mins to read

11.45 am - By ANNE PENKETH

Northern Alliance soldiers have admitted that they had killed hundreds of pro-Taleban fighters holed up in a school, providing the first direct evidence of a possible massacre by the victorious opposition forces in Afghanistan.

An ITV journalist went to the school in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif where the bodies of 520 mostly Pakistani fighters were still being brought out from the rubble yesterday – three days after the incident.

The standoff between the forces of veteran Uzbek commander Abdul Rashid Dostum, and more than 700 fighters in the school lasted all weekend, after the opposition Northern Alliance forces captured the strategic city on Friday.

It was the first Afghan city to fall to the opposition forces who then went on to overrun the entire northern part of the country in two days.

According to the Northern Alliance, the fire-fights at the school in Mazar intensified when the pro-Taleban refused to surrender.

"They claim that they actually sent elders into the school to try and persuade them to give themselves up. When they wouldn't give themselves up, the Northern Alliance went in with tanks," said reporter Andrea Catherwood.

"I saw those tanks today and they demolished most of the school," Ms Catherwood said.

The international Red Cross were bringing out bodies on stretchers from the ruins of the school yesterday.

Reports had circulated since Monday that Pakistani fighters had been massacred after surrendering, but the British television crew was the first to confirm what happened by talking to some of the soldiers involved. The Northern Alliance soldiers yesterday did not deny having killed the 520 fighters, but refused to describe their actions as a massacre.

"They of course, rather than calling it a massacre, are saying that they were in fact trying to make these men give up, and actually fighting with them to persuade them to leave," Ms Catherwood said.

In a further chilling move, Northern Alliance troops based in a building across the street from the school, displayed 42 Taleban prisoners who had been kept inside a freight container in the dark – traditionally the Alliance's detention centre of choice for Taleban prisoners. They were brought out, blinking, into the daylight.

"Quite what they thought was going to happen to them at that moment, one can only imagine. They were paraded in front of us. They obviously looked shocked, gaunt, weak - some of them were hurt, some of them were injured and were bandaged. We weren't able to speak to them, but they did look in quite a bad condition and as we left they were herded back into that metal container."

The Northern Alliance troops claim to hold 200 Taleban prisoners in Mazar-i-Sharif.

Human Rights Watch yesterday pointed out that it had to be established whether the Pakistani fighters were killed after surrendering or not. If they were already prisoners or had expressed their intention to surrender, or if they were "unconscious, defenceless or otherwise incapacitated," this would constitute a war crime by the Northern Alliance forces, the organisation said.

- INDEPENDENT

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