At least 100 Taliban fighters today crossed the frontline outside the besieged city of Kunduz to surrender to the Northern Alliance, but the militia beat off an opposition offensive near Kabul.
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A young Afghan boy
near Kunduz yesterday |
An AFP reporter saw the fighters of the hard-line Islamic militia cross the front line in trucks to give themselves up as the alliance tightened the noose around Kunduz, the last Taliban bastion north of the capital.
"Most Afghan Taliban have agreed to surrender, but the foreign fighters will not lay down their arms, negotiations are continuing," Alliance General Mohammad Daoud said.
Alliance leaders said some 2,000 of the 7,000 fighters trapped in Kunduz are foreigners, including Pakistani, Arab and Chechen members of the al-Qaeda network of chief terror suspect Osama bin Laden.
Even as negotiations between opposition and Taliban leaders were under way, a US B52 bomber continued to pound militia positions defending Kunduz, and alliance troops launched an assault on Khanabad, 20 kilometres away.
However a force of Taliban diehards repulsed an alliance offensive on hilltop positions near Maidan Shar 20 kilometres southwest of Kabul.
Northern Alliance soldiers said a 1,000-strong opposition force backed with tanks and artillery attacked a smaller Taliban force but were outflanked by a counterattack and retreated after US air support failed to arrive.
NATO Secretary General George Robertson warned today the Islamic army, which had controlled Kabul from 1996, was "not yet defeated," while British Prime Minister Mr Tony Blair warned against letting the hardliners trapped in Kunduz escape through a negotiated deal.
British commandos are fighting alongside US special forces trying to hunt down bin Laden, who is thought to be hiding in southern Afghanistan.
The Taliban still control the southern city of Kandahar, their spiritual home, but they are said to be negotiating with tribal leaders who have threatened to attack the city.
The confused situation around Kunduz, where rumours and denials of a negotiated surrender have been circulating for days, has been further muddied by apparent tensions between the different factions within the Tajik-dominated Northern Alliance.
General Mohammad Daoud, who is the nominal commander of operations on the Kunduz front line, made no attempt today to hide the fact that he would take a very dim view of Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostam capturing Kunduz.
Gen Dostam, whose forces are manning the front line northwest of the city, has been holding negotiations in the northern stronghold of Mazar-i-Sharif with Mohammad Faizal, one of the top Taliban commanders in the Kunduz sector.
The outcome of those negotiations remained unclear, but some of the Taliban forces in Kunduz have said they would be willing to surrender to Gen Dostam's troops rather than any other Northern Alliance faction.
AFP