Bodies found in captured city From AFP 23nov01

UP to 600 bodies have been found in Mazar-i-Sharif after the Afghan city was captured by the Northern Alliance.

The Red Cross says between 400 and 600 bodies have been found, but it can not say how the people died.

Olivier Durr, head of operations for central and south Asia for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said the discovery came after the Taliban left on November 9.

"But we cannot say these people had been brutally executed or were the result of fighting."

He could not comment on reports of massacres in Mazar-i-Sharif after the Taliban departed.

"Even before our expatriate staff entered (the city) our Afghan colleagues started to collect and bury quite a number of bodies," he said.

About 180 have already been buried.

A UN spokesman in Islamabad said around 100 young Taliban recruits had died in a school in Mazar-i-Sharif the day after victorious Northern Alliance forces moved into the city.

-- Anonymous, November 22, 2001