 |
|
Hundreds of foreign Taliban killed in prison riot
11/25/2001By BURT HERMAN
Associated Press
MAZAR-E-SHARIF, Afghanistan — Hundreds of Osama bin Laden's foreign legion were killed after staging an uprising with smuggled arms in a northern alliance prison Sunday, officials said. U.S. airstrikes helped quash the daylong insurrection.
There was no immediate word of any American casualties in the battle.
The fighters, about 300 Chechens, Pakistanis and Arabs who surrendered Saturday from the besieged city of Kunduz, had smuggled weapons under their tunics into the Qalai Janghi fortress and tried to fight their way out, Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Dan Stoneking said.
The alliance said most of the prisoners were killed.
The uprising began about 11 a.m., witnesses said. Alliance spokesman Zaher Wahadat said the prisoners seized other weapons from their guards and captured an ammunition depot, using its contents to fight the troops sent in to put down the revolt.
Yahsaw, a spokesman for northern alliance commander Mohammed Mohaqik, said the prisoners broke down the doors and tried to escape.
As outnumbered guards perched on the compound's walls fired wildly down at the prisoners, a U.S. special forces soldier could be seen in footage by a Germany television crew using a telephone to call in airstrikes and reinforcements.
``There's hundreds dead here at least,'' the man, who identified himself only as David, can be heard saying on Germany's ARD television network.
``I don't know how many Americans there were. I think one was killed, but I'm not sure,'' the U.S. soldier said in the footage. ``There were two of us at least, me and some other guy.''
The U.S. Central Command, which oversees the war in Afghanistan, declined comment on whether U.S. forces were in the fortress. Spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Dave Culler said he ``could not give any word at all'' on U.S. casualties.
Stoneking said he said he did not have any information that U.S. military forces were ``anywhere near'' the fortress. Earlier, he said ``it appears all U.S. personnel are accounted for'' and safe.
For several hours the firefight continued between the hundreds of prisoners and what ARD said were only 100 guards.
``There was general pandemonium,'' said Simon Brooks, head of Red Cross operations for northern Afghanistan, who was at the prison to check on the detainees' condition and escaped by climbing onto the roof with northern alliance commanders.
Gen. Rashid Dostum, who controls the compound but was overseeing the surrender at Kunduz when the uprising began, returned several hours later with tanks and machine guns. Stoneking said 500 troops accompanied him.
The airstrikes began about the same time, witnesses said. American warplanes streaked overhead, dropping bombs onto the southern part of the compound, where the prisoners were.
Some fighters limped away from the compound. Brooks said he met up with three seriously wounded fighters making their way toward Mazar-e-Sharif after the airstrikes began and sent them to a hospital. It wasn't clear whether they were escaped prisoners or alliance fighters.
By 6 p.m., Wahadat said, the compound was under control and most of the prisoners were dead.
``They were all killed and very few were arrested,'' Wahadat said.
But Sunday night, explosions could still be heard in the area and gunfire crackled on the streets of Mazar-e-Sharif, 10 miles to the east.
The prisoners had surrendered Saturday outside the nearby city of Kunduz under a deal aimed at ending a two-week siege by the northern alliance. The alliance said they took Kunduz late Sunday.
A senior alliance commander, Gen. Daoud Khan, said the foreign fighters bribed their way out of Kunduz and surrendered to Dostum's forces west of the city on Saturday morning.
Under the surrender deal, all Afghan Taliban in the city were to receive amnesty, and all foreign fighters were to be imprisoned and investigated for ties to bin Laden's al-Qaida network.
The fighters in Mazar-e-Sharif were taken to the compound for interviews on Saturday, and at least one staged a suicide surrender — giving up, then setting off a hand grenade, killing himself and two comrades and injuring an alliance officer.
Some northern alliance fighters had vowed to kill the foreigners rather than let them go on trial, and international human rights groups had urged the alliance to treat them humanely.
When the northern alliance captured Mazar-e-Sharif on Nov. 9, it said it had killed 1,000 Pakistanis and Arabs holed up in a school six miles to the west. The Red Cross later said hundreds of bodies were found in Mazar-e-Sharif but it would not say whether they had been killed in battle or summarily executed.
Pakistan's president Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who broke his country's close ties to the Taliban after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, repeatedly appealed to the U.S.-led coalition to prevent massacres of Pakistani fighters.
But the spokesman for Pakistan's military-led government, Gen. Rashid Quereshi, said Sunday night that it was too early to comment on the uprising.
``We are not even sure whether there were any Pakistanis there,'' he said. ``We don't have any presence in Afghanistan. We have to check the facts first before making any comments.''
Pakistan's state-run television network reported the uprising late Sunday but made no mention of any Pakistanis involved.