Scores killed in fresh Kunduz fighting as alliance forces round up Taliban holdouts

By ELLEN KNICKMEYER
Associated Press Writer

KUNDUZ, Afghanistan – Stomping on the faces of captured Taliban and shooting others as they lay wounded, opposition forces rampaged through Kunduz on Monday, staking claim to the Taliban's last northern stronghold. Gawking crowds ringed Taliban fighters dying in the streets.

"Talib! Talib!" little boys jeered as they ran alongside trucks carrying terrified Taliban prisoners. Bedraggled, middle-aged Afghan Taliban sat in the vehicles with their arms bound behind them.

Some alliance fighters turned immediately to Kunduz's spoils, hauling off captured Taliban pickup trucks, cars and vans on tow lines two, three or even four vehicles deep.

Kunduz's fall followed a two-week siege of this grimy market city of 100,000 people where thousands seen as the hard core of Taliban and allied foreign Islamic militia had holed up. Foreigners – Arabs, Pakistanis and others loyal to Osama bin Laden – feared northern alliance fighters would kill them in cold blood if they gave up.

An agreement worked out by leaders called for amnesty for the Afghan Taliban and for the foreigners to be confined and put on trial. Alim Razim, an adviser to alliance commander Rashid Dostum, said the alliance freed most of the 5,000 Afghan Taliban who surrendered and imprisoned 750 they suspected of being foreigners.

But when one main contingent of alliance forces moved in at daybreak Monday, Taliban were lying in wait – and opened fire with rocket-propelled grenades and rifles in hours-long battles. The alliance had claimed to have taken Kunduz on Sunday.

The last stand ended dismally for the Taliban. Witnesses said at least 10 Taliban died in one morning firefight alone.

Angry over the attack, northern alliance fighters roamed the dust-covered streets of this gray town, blasting away at wounded Taliban lying crumpled against store awnings.

Three other fly-covered Taliban lay dead in empty market stalls. Each man's big toes had been looped together with cords to prevent his escape while alive. Kunduz residents said the northern alliance had captured the wounded men in fighting Sunday, then shot them Monday.

All told, perhaps 100 foreign and local Taliban died in fighting early Monday, with another 10 northern alliance dead, alliance security official Rahman Ali said.

Alliance forces were going house-to-house, flushing out Taliban, he said.

On the main street at midafternoon, one burly, bearded Afghan Taliban appeared to be trying to win over uniformed soldiers who had hauled him from hiding.

Within seconds, the fat man was down on the ground, rifle butts smashing into him. Alliance fighters stomped on his face as he lay writhing, firing a shot into the air to drive back a too-curious crowd.

Fighters finally threw the man's body, inert, into the back of a truck.

And this was treatment for the Afghan Taliban; foreign fighters were nowhere in sight. Ali, the security official, looked at a loss when asked to which prison captured Taliban were being taken. Individual commanders were taking the prisoners, he finally said. To where would be worked out later.

Northern alliance fighters particularly hate foreign fighters, and consider them invaders of their country. Fighters on the front outside Kunduz often spoke forgivingly about their fellow Afghans in the Taliban – but pledged in bloody terms to fight the foreign Islamic militia to the death.

But even fellow Afghans have a history of savage massacres in back-and-forth captures of cities. Taliban and opposition fighters both are accused of killing hundreds of unarmed prisoners in reprisal massacres during their yearslong war.

Ali and alliance Gen. Daoud Khan said hundreds of Arab fighters broke away and fled to nearby Chardara, just west of Kunduz. Ali said the fighters were surrounded by Monday afternoon, with nowhere to run.

Kunduz's people – mostly Pashtuns – stayed separate from the savagery, dealt out by Kalashnikov-brandishing troops pouring into the city by the thousands.

Shops remained shuttered and women and children were nowhere to be seen. Ethnic Tajik men and others ventured out to gawk at the military hardware going by – and offered clues to the depth of the anger felt toward the Taliban and foreign fighters.

Kunduz had been under Taliban control for five long years, said Taj Mohammed, wearing the green, flowing robes of ethnic Tajik men.

Kunduz's Taliban leaders had limited movement from the city without permission, whipped residents on the streets at the slightest provocation and abused the city's minorities in favor of the Pashtun majority, he said.

"During the rule of the Taliban, we were prisoners. We were servants," the white-bearded man said.

Now, "we are free," he said, smiling gently and pressing his hand to his heart.

AP-WS-11-26-01 1452EST