KABUL/WASHINGTON, 14 November — The fall of Kabul to the opposition Northern Alliance yesterday produced scenes of extraordinary jubilation in a city where for five terrible years expressions of joy had been outlawed. When anti-Taleban forces swept unopposed into the capital, tens of thousands of locals were soon in the streets, celebrating the end of rule by tyranny under the Taleban regime.

Many Afghans gave thanks for their liberation by kneeling in prayer. Others played music from loudspeakers, music forbidden under the threat of beatings just a few hours before. Still others waited their turn at barber shops, out of which periodically emerged a young man with clean-shaven face.

The same young men flung off their turbans, so long the trade mark of a Taleban militia who, as a final criminal act, stole millions of dollars from money changers in Shara-e-Shazada market. The thefts wiped out the life savings of many local residents, and dealt a major blow to the local economy.

The thousands of soldiers from the Alliance capped a stunning 18-hour push from positions north of Kabul by marching into a shattered city abandoned by Taleban militia the previous night.

Taleban supreme leader Mulla Muhammad Omar urged his scattered fighters to regroup and fight, to obey commanders and not desert.

"You should regroup yourselves, resist and fight," he added. Omar, who said he was speaking from the southern stronghold of Kandahar, spoke for eight minutes.

The opposition forces took control of the presidential palace and other major public buildings in Kabul yesterday, including the state Bakhtar news agency. Opposition forces were also reported to be assuring the security of foreign embassies in the capital.

The Northern Alliance claimed the Taleban were no longer in control of what was their powerbase in the southern city of Kandahar after their overnight retreat from the capital, Kabul.

"In Kandahar there is a chaotic situation as of today," Alliance Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah said in Kabul.

"Taleban authorities are not seen in Kandahar so the people are left in an open situation," he said. According to a report Mulla Omar had fled Kandahar.

Witnesses said earlier yesterday thousands of tribal fighters were advancing on Kandahar after taking the nearby airport.

Travelers from the area arriving in the Pakistani border town of Chaman said they had seen 4,000 to 5,000 fighters capture the airport, some 30 km south of Kandahar.

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in Washington yesterday a small number of US soldiers are in Kabul and they were not prepared to act as a police force to prevent reprisal attacks by opposition forces against Taleban supporters.

Rumsfeld warned nations, without naming any in particular, against providing safe haven for top terror suspect Osama Bin Laden.

The Northern Alliance triumph was achieved largely without blood. But a group of hard-core Taleban fighters staged a last stand in the Shari Naw area. Six bullet-riddled bodies were later dumped in a nearby park.

"Death to Pakistan, Death to terrorists" shouted a crowd of several hundred who gathered in the park, many spitting on the bodies.

An official of the International Committee of the Red Cross, who led attempts to recover the remains, said up to 20 bodies might be in the park.

"This was all our capital. Even the computers, carpets and tea pots have gone. This is a crime against Afghanistan, the Afghans and against Islam," said Haji Amin Jan Khosti, chief of the Shara-e-Shazada money exchange.

Residents said they also saw armed men robbing the central bank and driving away in cars stuffed with money. Civilians were seen stealing fans and air conditioners from the Pakistan Embassy.

The opposition dispatched police units and other security forces to all corners of the city after reports of shooting by renegade fighters holed up in abandoned Taleban strongholds.

Armed soldiers chased looters carrying carpets and other goods stolen from markets.

Groups of citizens stormed the prison in the western Afghan city of Herat late on Monday, liberating around 1,000 prisoners, an Iranian state radio reporter in the region announced.

"After the liberation of the city (Herat), the people attacked the prison, forcefully entered it and liberated some 1,000 prisoners," the journalist said in a broadcast report. A group of 360 prisoners from inside the Taleban police headquarters were freed and a jail for religious offenders was also emptied, witnesses said.

Party atmosphere

There was also a party atmosphere on the streets.

For many Kabul residents, happiness was not so much an expression of support for the Northern Alliance as an outpouring of relief that the Taleban had gone.

And there was also fear that the latest upheaval in Kabul’s tumultuous history would see a return to the lawlessness and anarchy that characterized the 1992-1996 Mujahedeen government.

That regime, which followed the collapse of a Moscow-backed government, included several of the Northern Alliance ethnic factions which returned to Kabul yesterday.

"If the opposition forces are able to keep security, and ethnic differences do not emerge among them, then I will be very happy to see them back in Kabul because the Taleban were a tyrannical regime," said 58-year-old resident Abdul Gafoor.

The ambassador for the Afghan government-in-exile in Dushanbe, Said Ibrahim Khikmat, said ousted Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani planned to return to Kabul today.

Khikmat also said that a military and political committee has been created, headed by Rabbani’s military commander Gen. Fahim, to ensure security in Kabul.

In their advance, Alliance fighters reached the Afghan border post at the Torkham crossing to Pakistan at the western end of the fabled Khyber Pass last night, a Reuters cameraman said.

However, officials at the border post said Taleban fighters were still manning the border post.

A Reuters cameraman said that at about 6.30 p.m. (1300 GMT), Taleban fighters on the Afghan side of the border moved aside as opposition forces approached.

More provinces liberated

The Alliance also claimed that five more provinces, which included the key eastern city of Jalalabad, had fallen under their control.

Younis Qanuni, the newly appointed head of the opposition military commission for Kabul, told AFP the Taleban had lost Nangarhar, Kunar and Laghman provinces in the east along with Ghazni in the south and Farah in the west.

"According to the written reports I have received, the people of the eastern zone in general, and also Ghazni and Farah, have been liberated."

He said "local people" controlled the provinces following the fall of Kabul to the opposition early yesterday morning.

Taleban sources in Jalalabad, a major eastern military garrison for the Taleban in Nangarhar province and a rumored stomping ground of Osama Bin Laden, earlier said the city had been heavily bombed by US planes overnight.

Maulvi Abdul Kabeer, governor of Jalalabad province and a close associate of Mulla Omar, has not been seen for the past 24 hours, the sources said. Rumors were rife he had gone into hiding.

Qanuni said the Taleban had evacuated the military airport of Shindand as they pulled out of Farah province.

He said the militia was on the run and predicted their total collapse was near.

The Taleban closed down their embassy in Pakistan yesterday after the capture of Kabul. Ambassador Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef left his residence in the morning for an unknown location, and later in the day all the embassy’s staff drove away in mini-vans and four-wheel drive vehicles, leaving the building empty.

Al-Jazeera office bombed

Al-Jazeera television, which found fame and controversy with exclusive reports from behind Taleban lines, said its Kabul office had been put out of action by a US missile.

"US aircraft bombed the Al-Jazeera offices in Kabul during the night," the Qatar-based satellite channel announced.

Al-Jazeera staff in the capital, which fell to Northern Alliance opposition forces at dawn, had not been wounded, but they could no longer be contacted, according to a news bulletin.

A United Nations official said yesterday more than 100 Taleban hiding in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif were killed after its capture by the opposition Northern Alliance, a UN spokeswoman Stephanie Bunker told a news conference that different sources had confirmed that more than 100 Taleban fighters hiding after the fall of Mazar-e-Sharif were killed.

"We have a confirmation that it did occur, that there were more than a hundred people, they were relatively young people who were killed by the Northern Alliance troops on Saturday," Bunker said, adding their nationality was not known.

She did not know how they were killed, she said. "All I know is that it was not in combat."