Northern Alliance forces enter Kabul

KABUL, NOV. 13. Greeted by cheering residents, Northern Alliance fighters captured Afghanistan's capital Kabul today in defiance of international pressure to stay out, after the city was abandoned by the Taliban under cover of darkness.

``We have taken Kabul,'' shouted one jubilant fighter as he and fellow soldiers stood in a group on a street in the city centre on day 38 of the war the United States launched following the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.

Heavily-armed Alliance troops took over military bases, roamed the city, hunting down Taliban stragglers and their Arab, Pakistani and Chechen allies from Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda movement. At least five Pakistanis and two Arabs were killed.

Some Arab and Chechen fighters loyal to Osama bin Laden clambered into trees to fire on the advancing opposition soldiers. They were shot and their bodies hung in the branches or lay sprawled on the ground.

In Shahr-i-Naw park in the city centre lay the bloody bodies of seven black-turbaned Taliban fighters, apparently executed with bullets to the head. Bank notes had been stuffed in their noses and ears and children spat at the corpses.

For the first time in five years, music was played, some young men shaved off their beards or wore jeans - actions forbidden by the Taliban religious police who banned music and western dress and made beards compulsory for men.

But central Kabul was tense, with shops closed and pick-up trucks filled with opposition soldiers armed with Kalashnikov rifles and shoulder-held rocket launchers, patrolling the streets.

Opposition Defence Minister, Gen. Mohammad Fahim and Foreign Minister, Abdullah Abdullah drove into the city in a black Toyota landcruiser, followed by a column of military police dressed in dark green uniforms and armed with rifles. Behind them moved hundreds of armed Northern Alliance fighters in camouflage.

Witnesses said armed men had occupied all major government buildings, many of which were looted by residents. Prisoners broke out of jails abandoned by the Taliban.

The Taliban had plundered Afghanistan's main currency market before fleeing in the night in a convoy of tanks, armoured personnel carriers and battered pick-up trucks, heading for their stronghold, the southern city of Kandahar.

They took with them eight western aid workers - two Americans, two Australians and four Germans - facing charges of promoting Christianity.

`Resist and fight'

The Afghan Islamic Press Agency said the Taliban supreme leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar told the militia in a radio address to fight back and not to desert.

``You should regroup yourselves, resist and fight,'' Omar was quoted as saying.

Buoyed by the lightning capture of the north of the country over the weekend and by more than a month of blistering U.S. air strikes on the Taliban, the Northern Alliance broke through Taliban frontlines outside Kabul yesterday backed by U.S. bombing and a fierce artillery barrage.

By dawn today, their fighters had raced into the city, waving their assault rifles. Residents greeted them with shouts of ``Down with the Taliban!'' and ``Welcome the Northern Alliance!'' Crowds came out of the city and surrounded truckloads of soldiers poised to enter. They threw plastic flowers onto tanks.

One alliance commander, Gul Haidar, ordered his troops not to loot. ``We should make sure that there is no problem for the people and no theft happens,'' he told his fighters.

At Bagram airport north of Kabul, U.S. special forces troops wearing civilian clothes and sunglasses and carrying M-16 assault rifles inspected the Northern Alliance positions.

At trenches near the airport lay the bodies of 20 Pakistani Taliban fighters. About 20 Afghan Taliban who had surrendered and who were still armed chatted to opposition soldiers.

``We did a deal a month ago with the Northern Alliance to surrender when they arrived,'' a Taliban commander named Tour said.

`Kandahar airport captured'

Along the Pakistani border at Chaman, a Taliban official, Mullah Najibullah, said about 200 former guerrillas had mutinied against the Taliban in Kandahar and that there was fierce fighting around the airport, outside the city.

The Al-Jazeera satellite channel reported that the Kandahar airport had been captured. Kandahar is 500 km southwest of Kabul. Also, Taliban guards on Tuesday abandoned the Torkham border station near the western Pakistani city of Peshawar.

Sources contacted by telephone in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad said it appeared the Taliban were preparing to abandon that northeastern city too. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity.

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

The U.S. wanted a broad agreement on the structure of any post- Taliban government before the alliance entered Kabul.

But there have been few signs of progress on such a deal. The United Nations says it wants an urgent meeting of Afghan leaders to discuss the country's political future.

Meanwhile, military progress by the Northern Alliance far outstripped political progress in finding a new government.

In Rome, a senior adviser to Afghanistan's exiled former king, King Zahir Shah,, seen as a key player in the country's political future, said the Northern Alliance had broken an agreement with the monarch by entering Kabul.

``We did not expect that they would enter Kabul. We wanted Kabul to be demilitarised and that the Kabul government and administration should come under a political process,'' Abdul Sattar Sirat told Reuters.

In the west of the country, veteran Mujahideen commander, Ismail Khan, accompanied by 4,000 fighters, entered his former powerbase - the city of Herat - at dawn, a spokesman said.

The triumphant return of the warlord known as the ``Lion of Herat'' came six years after he was toppled by the Taliban.

``We have full control of Herat,'' the spokesman said.

Minister's denial

The Alliance's Interior Minister, Mr. Yunis Qanuni, said his troops were not occupying Kabul and that his movement wanted to set up a council to prepare for a transitional Government. ``We have not entered here to establish a Government,'' he told Iranian television monitored in the United Arab Emirates. ``We are here on a mission to provide security to Kabul and I am not here in the capacity of a Government official,'' he said. ``The forces who have entered the city are only security forces. Our troops are not in the city, they are merely positioned on the outskirts of the city.''

`Osama, Mullah Omar safe'

A Teheran report said that Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden were ``safe and sound.'' An unidentified Taliban official told the IRNA news agency today that ``in line with Omar's directive,'' the Taliban forces have moved ``to the south,'' it said.

- AP, AFP, Reuters

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