Tuesday November 13 1:49 AM ET

Kandahar Airport Falls to Opposition-Tribal Chief

QUETTA, Pakistan (Reuters) - The strategic airport outside the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, powerbase of the fundamentalist Taliban, fell to opposition forces on Tuesday, tribal leaders said.

``It's confirmed from tribal leaders,'' Mohammad Yusaf Pashtun, spokesman for former mujahideen governor of Kandahar, Gul Agha, told Reuters in this southwestern Pakistani city just across the border from Afghanistan.

``They don't know who took it,'' he said.

``Kandahar airport has fallen in the hands of the Northern Alliance,'' Qatar's al-Jazeera television said in an unsourced report and without further details.

The report came moments after the satellite television station's correspondent in Kandahar, Youssef al-Shouli, said in a live interview that he could hear small arms fire close to the city.

-- Anonymous, November 13, 2001