Hundreds of foreign Taliban fighters were killed Sunday as American airstrikes targeted an alleged uprising by prisoners of war in northern Afghanistan, as the city of Kunduz appeared to fall into opposition hands, said reports.
The Pentagon on Sunday denied reports that any American military personnel were killed in the prison uprising in Mazar-i-Sharif, said CNN, adding that the US Central Command said it could not rule out any casualties among any other branches of the government.
However, the claim appeared to be contradicted by footage from a German television crew at the scene of the fight, which taped a US special forces soldier calling in airstrikes on the prison fortress near the city of Mazar-e-Sharif.
The US soldier, who identified himself only as David, is shown on the video from Germany's ARD network. ``I don't know how many Americans there were,'' he says on the tape, cited by AP. ``I think one was killed, but I'm not sure. There were two of us at least, me and some other guy.''
Tom Crispell, a spokesman for the Central Intelligence Agency, which has operatives working with anti-Taliban forces in Afghanistan, told AP his agency had no comment on the operation.
The foreign fighters from the besieged Taliban stronghold of Kunduz had insisted on security guarantees following reports of summary executions by the Northern Alliance in Mazar-i-Sharif and Kabul, the Afghan capital, said AP.
Meanwhile, the fate of Afghan Taliban fighters will be decided "case-by-case," with most of them allowed to go home, CNN quoted Kenton Keith, an American ambassador representing the coalition in Islamabad, as saying on Sunday. "They will be disarmed," he said on NBC's Meet the Press. "It is unlikely, we think, that they will be able to reorganize and pose a threat."
KUNDUZ FALLS TO NORTHERN ALLIANCE
Northern Alliance forces entered the Taliban's last northern stronghold of Konduz on Sunday, and one of their generals told CNN that his forces now controlled parts of the city, with hundreds of remaining Taliban retreating to the west of the city.
The Allaince acknowledged some resistance still remained in the form of members of Al Qaeda, the network of Osama bin Laden supporters.
Bin Laden, who is accused of masterminding the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that killed thousands in the US, brought down the wrath of the US on his Afghan hosts and has yet to be located.
Pressing the search for bin Laden, the US military said the targets included Al Qaeda and Taliban hide-out caves and tunnels as well as Taliban military forces arrayed against opposition forces, according to AP.
DIPLOMATS ARRIVE IN GERMANY FOR TALKS ON AFGHAN GOV'T
As the fightinging raged on, delegates began arriving in Bonn on Sunday for talks aimed at establishing a broad-based interim government in Afghanistan, said CNN.
The talks, predicted to last up to two weeks, have been arranged under the auspices of the United Nations in an attempt to restore stability in the country after 20 years of fighting, added the news service.
Western countries are concerned that a civil war like that of the early 1990s could follow the collapse of the Taliban, since opposition forces are fragmented along ethnic lines - Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
