KABUL/LONDON, 10 November — Afghan opposition forces scored their first major victory against the Taleban yesterday capturing the regime’s key northern stronghold Mazar-e-Sharif with the backing of US airstrikes and were poised to advance toward the capital Kabul.
"We have the entire city. The Taleban didn’t put up a fight. They ran away," said Muhammad Ashraf Nadeem, a spokesman for ethnic Tajik commander Atta Muhammad, one of three Northern Alliance generals involved in the attack.
Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, backed the claim, while the third commander, Hazara leader Haji Muhammad Muhaqiq, said his men had overcome "fierce resistance" to take a military airfield west of the city.
The Taleban confirmed that opposition troops had entered Mazar-e-Sharif, according to the Afghan Islamic Press. Quoting unnamed Taleban sources, the AIP said that the US-led coalition’s heavy bombardment paved the way for opposition troops to enter the city’s southern outskirts.
A spokesman for the opposition group told Russian television around 300 Taleban fighters had been captured. Northern Alliance spokesman Muhammad Kargar said about 2,500 troops under the command of Dostum had entered the outskirts of the city after US bombers pounded positions of the ruling Taleban regime south of the city over the past week.
The anti-Taleban Northern Alliance entered the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif after taking over the airport following a day of intense fighting.
In the north of Kabul, Northern Alliance, backed by tanks, massed at the front-line just north of Kabul late yesterday and commanders said they were ready to advance.
A Reuters cameraman saw about 800 Northern Alliance fighters march toward the front-line along with four tanks and 40 artillery pieces while US jets roared overhead, dropping their bombs on Taleban positions overlooking the opposition-held Bagram airport. However, a senior source at the front said later that the advance had been postponed.
In Washington, Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said the situation on the ground near the important crossroads city of Mazar-e-Sharif was fluid but "encouraging."
"The situation on the ground is fluid, until things settle and we see where forces are after a day or two, our inclination is to withhold comment. What we have seen is encouraging," Clarke added. Dostum told CNN that 90 soldiers of the ruling Taleban militia had been killed in the battle.
He added that the Taleban appeared to have abandoned the city. He said that in his own forces 28 men had been killed and more than 30 injured.
"In Mazar, the people from the Taleban who got shot are in hospital, but the rest of them who are healthy have all left." Ethnic Hazara commander Haji Muhammad Muhaqiq also said late yesterday his troops had captured the Dehdadi airport on the western outskirts of the city, as well as the nearby base of the Taleban’s 18th division. Muhaqiq said the alliance had thrown 7,000-8,000 soldiers into the battle and other official said US special forces had provided guidance.
Earlier, thousands of Taleban reinforcements, including Arab volunteers loyal to Osama Bin Laden, had been sent to defend the city after US forces arrived across the border in Uzbekistan in September.
Meanwhile, sources close to the Taleban said Al-Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden and his associate Aymen Al-Zawahiri had been granted Afghan citizenship by Mulla Omar soon after the US-led campaign was launched.
The city of Mazar-e-Sharif controls vital supply routes and its loss would be a major blow to the Taleban’s ability to defend northern Afghanistan.
During the day yesterday, American planes launched intense bombing raids on Taleban front-line positions.
The Taleban, earlier in the day, admitted that US warplanes carpet bombed a wide area to shield the opposition’s ground attacks against the militia, but had claimed that the Taleban troops were stable and in control of the area. A Taleban spokesman told AIP that US fighter jets carried out "savage bombing" on areas between 10 kilometers and 22 kilometers away from Mazar-e-Sharif. Two US F-18 planes dropped at least 11 bombs on the villages of Roiesht and Okhelak between midday (0730 GMT) and 1:00 p.m. The villages are on the far western part of the front that separates Taleban forces from the opposition Northern Alliance in the Shomali plain.
The planes, flying unusually low, took turns to drop their payloads, which appeared to include cluster bombs designed to destroy infantry and armor concentrations.
During overnight and early morning raids US planes dropped at least 40 bombs on the front-line where Taleban fighters are dug in facing the forces of the Northern Alliance, said witnesses from the front.
According to an opposition spokesman most of the civilian population had left the Taleban-held northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif.
The spokesman also said the Northern Alliance had declared an amnesty for people in the city who had previously supported the militia.
Taleban officials said the bombing also targeted cities across Afghanistan, killing civilians in a hospital in the southern city of Kandahar.
Overnight attacks on Taleban areas and front-lines left at least 28 Afghans including four Taleban fighters dead and several others injured, a Taleban official in Kabul said yesterday.
Speaking by satellite phone from Kabul, the official told DPA the US-led airstrikes pounded Taleban positions and civilian areas.
"The American aircraft dropped at least seven bombs on different locations including a village in the Qarabagh district and Istaleef districts to the north of Kabul," the official said. "These attacks killed some 16 people including four Taleban soldiers."
But the official described the pre-dawn raids on the southern city of Kandahar, the main target of the bombings because of the presence of the Taleban’s leadership, as the "heaviest."
In the Khakrez district, some 40 km north of Kandahar, at least seven people were killed and nine injured, the official said. Other five civilians were killed elsewhere.
Opposition commander Khoz Muhammad, who witnessed the strikes, said: "The Taleban can only escape these explosions by sheltering in the Kharez" — the underground irrigation canals which run through many Afghan villages.
In Tehran, Iran’s President Muhammad Khatami asked the United Nations Secretary-General to persuade the United States to stop the war during Ramadan, state-television reported yesterday.
The oppressed people of Afghanistan have already paid long enough for terrorist activities in their country. At least they should be spared (from air strikes) during Ramadan, Khatami told Kofi Annan in a meeting in New York on Thursday.
Before his departure form Tehran, Khatami said that he will propose to the UN a peace coalition for resolving the Afghan and terrorism crisis after the problems have not been resolved by force.
In Dushanbe, deposed Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani met the head of a UN mission for Afghanistan, Francesc Vendrell, yesterday to discuss the formation of a post-Taleban government, a diplomatic source said.
