Battle rages anew for fortress in northern Afghanistan after al-Qaida prisoners rise up

By BURT HERMAN
Associated Press Writer

MAZAR-E-SHARIF, Afghanistan – Mortar shells exploding around them, hundreds of anti-Taliban fighters – and some U.S. soldiers – rushed into a mud-walled fortress Monday where dozens of captives loyal to Osama bin Laden were said to be fighting to the death.

The prisoners, trapped around a tower, fought with rocket-propelled grenades and mortars they had raided from an ammunition warehouse in the second day of fighting at the fortress.

"They're fighting until death. For this reason it has continued," said Alam, an alliance commander outside the fort coordinating attacks with a walkie-talkie. "They won't hand themselves over alive."

Hundreds of the prisoners had been killed a day earlier in fighting and U.S. airstrikes after they pulled weapons from their tunics and attacked their outnumbered guards, according to the Pentagon and the northern alliance.

Two witnesses said an American may have been killed in the fighting Sunday, and an alliance commander said one American was killed Monday in a misguided U.S. airstrike. The Pentagon said five U.S. military men were injured in friendly fire, but that no U.S. military personnel were killed in the fighting.

Both the Pentagon and the alliance had declared the uprising over Sunday night, but alliance reinforcements poured into the fortress throughout the day Monday and U.S. warplanes streaked overhead.

By nightfall, Alam said, 2,000 alliance troops were inside the sprawling, 18th century fortress, 10 miles west of the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif. He said more were on their way.

In the late afternoon, a van filled with six U.S. soldiers in desert camouflage stopped alongside Alam, and one of them got out to hug Alam and ask him in a local language who was in charge in the fort. He got back in the van and sped off toward the fortress.

The death toll among the prisoners was undetermined but appeared high. The alliance said most of the prisoners in the fortress were killed, and estimates of how many had been there ran from 300 to as high as 800.

"They were all killed and very few were arrested," alliance spokesman Zaher Wahadat said.

Alim Razim, an adviser to the fortress' commander Gen. Rashid Dostum, 40 northern alliance troops were killed in the fighting. He added that any prisoners still alive wouldn't be for long.

"Those who are left over will be dead," he said. "None of them can escape."

The fighting was fierce Monday afternoon. At one point, a group of soldiers could be seen running into one part of the fort under the cover of machine-gun fire. Fifteen minutes later, mortar shells began to explode and they made a hasty retreat.

The prisoners, mostly Arabs, Chechens and Pakistanis, surrendered Saturday from the besieged city of Kunduz and were being held under the terms of a surrender deal to determine their ties to bin Laden's al-Qaida network.

U.S. military officials said the prisoners smuggled weapons under their tunics and seized an ammunitions depot to do battle with their captors. After several hours, about 500 alliance reinforcements arrived, backed by U.S. airstrikes.

Alex Perry, a journalist for Time magazine who was inside the fort during the uprising, said 800 people were involved in the fighting, and that an American soldier was killed.

"There were two American soldiers inside the fort: one of whom was disarmed and killed – he was called Mike," Perry reported on the Web site Time.com.

Footage taken by a crew from Germany's ARD television network also showed a U.S. special forces soldier inside telling his commanders he believed an American had been killed.

Alam, indicating a large hole in the fortress' wall, also said a U.S. bomb had missed its target, hitting the area of the fortress where the alliance troops were based. He said it killed six alliance fighters and one American.

Pentagon spokesman Marine Lt. Col. David Lapan said Sunday that no U.S. military personnel were killed in the uprising.

On Monday, Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said five U.S. military men were injured in a "friendly fire" incident when a U.S. JDAM smart bomb went off-target. None of the injuries was life-threatening, she said, and three of the injured were removed to Uzbekistan. The other two remained in Afghanistan.

AP-WS-11-26-01 1153EST