'No survivors' as Taleban
revolt ends
The Northern Alliance suffered heavy casualties
A revolt by Taleban fighters imprisoned in a fort near the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif has ended.
Witnesses say a series of deafening explosions was heard after opposition forces fired tank shells, which are said to have killed the last two Taleban prisoners still holding out.
The Taleban prisoners had been holed up since Sunday, putting up stiff resistance against Northern Alliance troops and being subjected to heavy bombardment by US aircraft.
Northern Alliance forces are now checking that all the insurgents, who originally numbered several hundred, are dead. Sporadic shooting has been heard.
The alliance had detained about 500 non-Afghan Taleban prisoners who had earlier surrendered at Kunduz in the Qala-e-Jhangi fortress.
The revolt began when the prisoners killed some of their guards with guns they had reportedly smuggled into the fort, and seized more weapons.
Some reports say they then attempted a mass breakout.
Air strikes
US warplanes launched up to 30 air strikes overnight against the fighters, who were originally detained following their surrender in Kunduz over the weekend.
Northern Alliance fighters were seen scrambling up the ramparts of the fort earlier on Tuesday.
British and American special forces were on the scene to co-ordinate the onslaught.
At one point on Monday, an American bomb went astray, killing six Northern Alliance fighters and seriously injuring five US soldiers.
The hurt men were among a number of American special forces inside the fort who are helping to co-ordinate the response of the Northern Alliance.
The International Committee for the Red Cross has been trying to visit the fort to assess the situation.
US casualties
Alliance soldiers emerging from the fort described a bloodbath.
The injured US soldiers have been evacuated to Uzbekistan, said General Richard Myers, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, in Washington.
A journalist who was near Mazar-e-Sharif during the initial stages of the revolt said American and British special forces went into the fort because they thought an American soldier there had been killed, and another had run out of ammunition.
Denial of opportunism
Abdul Wahid, a Northern Alliance spokesman, denied his group was using the uprising as an opportunity to get rid of unwanted prisoners, and stressed the alliance was aware of its international obligations.
The prisoners were mainly Arabs, Chechens and Pakistanis linked to Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.
Foreign fighters, who are locally regarded as
destabilising elements in the country, have
often been beaten or killed when territory has
fallen to the Northern Alliance in the course of
the current conflict.
-- Anonymous, November 27, 2001