Violent shadow over Kabul

KABUL, NOV. 13. Hundreds of Afghans gathered in a Kabul park today, amid celebrations for the Northern Alliance's entry into the city, to spit on the bodies of six executed Taliban fighters.

The emotions vented at the six bullet-riddled corpses in a dusty street on the edge of the Shari Naw Park was a macabre demonstration of the pent-up hatred felt by many people for the militia, most of whose fighters fled Kabul before the killings.

Several other people were feared to have been killed in a similar way, according to internatonal aid workers.

``Death to Pakistan, death to terrorists,'' shouted onlookers as officials from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) sought to move the bodies from the park to a local morgue.

One witness said the Taliban fighters had been summarily executed shortly after 8 a.m. as the victorious forces of the Alliance seized control of Kabul. ``The Taliban fighters attacked the Alliance soldiers as they reached Shari Naw but they were outnumbered and gunned down in the street between the park and the jail,'' said Mr. Ahmad Rushat.

He said the bodies had then been dumped in the park as a reminder to others that the Alliance was now in control of Kabul and would brook no resistance.

Resentment has been particularly directed at the Taliban's foreign - mainly Arab and Pakistani - fighters who are said to make up a substantial number of the militia's army.

The ICRC official, Mr. Albert Cairo, hurried to the scene to recover the bodies and predicted that the number of people executed in such a fashion was likely to rise into double figures. ``So far I have found six bodies, but I suspect that there are up to 20 in this area alone.''

Outside the jail, where the Taliban had imprisoned many Afghans for trimming their beards in un-Islamic style, supporters of the Northern Alliance tore down a Taliban flag and stamped it into the dust. ``The Taliban threw me in jail for three days just because they didn't like the fact I cut my beard. They were cruel killers and life here can only get better now that they have gone,'' said Mohammed Nahim, a 23-year-old Tajik.

``Tomorrow I shave!'', shouted Mr. Mahmoud Fawad, as others flung the black turbans that symbolised Taliban rule into the park.

The Taliban pulled out as the Northern Alliance broke through their frontlines to the north on Monday after more than a month of pulverising U.S. bombing raids.

Witnesses reported the sudden flight of Taliban forces after the Northern Alliance captured strategic villages on the road to Kabul with the aid of carpet-bombing raids by U.S B-52 bombers.

But in Kabul's ``park of death'' the atmosphere remained tense with fears that the ethnic factions of the Alliance - responsible for widespread devastation and infighting here during the 1992- 1996 Mujahideen government - get drawn into a fresh wave of internecine violence.

- AFP

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