Herald-Sun

Alliance Says Commander Enters Kunduz By ELLEN KNICKMEYER : Associated Press Writer Nov 25, 2001 : 2:09 am ET

BANGI, Afghanistan (AP) -- The first northern alliance commander entered the besieged city of Kunduz on Sunday, and the city's defenders were surrendering "continuously," alliance spokesmen said.

The city's fall would mark the loss of the last Taliban citadel in the north of Afghanistan.

"It has just happened -- our commander Mir Alam has just entered Kunduz," spokesman Ashraf Nadeem said by satellite telephone from the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif, near the city's western front.

Kunduz has been under siege by the alliance for the past 12 days, defended by Taliban and foreign fighters, some loyal to Osama bin Laden.

As Alam entered the city, the defenders were giving up in droves, said alliance spokesman Zaher Wasik, interviewed just outside the city.

"A lot of Taliban are surrendering. Continuously they are coming to us. There is no fighting," he said, adding that alliance soldiers were converging from all directions.

A short time earlier, alliance commander Gen. Daoud Khan had told reporters that if Kunduz' defenders didn't surrender on Sunday, the city would be taken by force. Asked what would happen if the Taliban and foreign forces didn't give up, he replied: "Fighting."

More Taliban fighters fled the city overnight, Nadeem said from Mazar-e-Sharif. He said some foreigners were among them, although the numbers were not clear.

More than 1,100 fighters from the Taliban side had turned themselves in by nightfall Saturday. The Afghans among them were welcomed like brothers by northern alliance troops, with kisses and embraces; the foreigners were taken off to a detention center.

When the siege of Kunduz began Nov. 12, alliance commanders estimated about 10,000 Taliban troops and 3,000 foreigners were defending the city.

It was unclear whether the hard core of foreign fighters loyal to Osama bin Laden -- most of them Arabs, Chechens or Pakistanis -- would opt to fight to the finish.

At least one staged a suicide surrender on Saturday -- giving up, then setting off a hand grenade while waiting to be searched, killing himself and two comrades, and injuring an alliance officer.

A former Taliban deputy interior minister who defected -- the most senior Taliban defector thus far -- on Saturday said he blamed bin Laden and his foreign fighters as well as extremist Taliban for bringing on the U.S.-led war.

"I have being saying for a long time that the foreigners have to leave our country, that they have plans of their own and are destroying our country," Mullah Mohammed Khaqzar told reporters in Kabul, the capital.

Khaqzar said he warned Taliban supreme leader Mohammed Omar that he should "tell the terrorists to leave" or they "would destroy our country." But Omar fell under the influence of bin Laden, he said.

Under the surrender agreement near Kunduz, Afghan Taliban fighters were guaranteed safe passage out of the city, but the foreigners were being arrested pending investigation into possible ties to bin Laden.

The United States had strongly opposed any agreement that would allow the foreign fighters to go free. President Bush launched airstrikes against Afghanistan on Oct. 7 after the Taliban refused to hand over bin Laden for his alleged role in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

On Saturday, U.S. jets bombed an area near the eastern city of Jalalabad, where bin Laden maintained camps. Anti-Taliban officials in the area said bin Laden was near Jalalabad when the bombing campaign began and may be hiding near his Tora Bora camp in the mountains.

Alliance commanders had expected the surrender of Kunduz to take place this weekend -- and as the day passed, more and more Taliban fighters appeared along front-line positions to give themselves up.

"We gave up to the northern alliance," said a smiling Taliban fighter, Shah Mahmoud, who defected on the eastern front. "They are our brothers, and this is our country. The foreigners will never surrender, I think."

Pakistan's president has appealed to international organizations, the United States and Britain to prevent massacres of Pakistani fighters, many of whom went to Afghanistan after the bombing campaign began to join the Taliban side.

-- Anonymous, November 25, 2001