M A I N   N E W S

Afghan oppn seizes Mazar-e-Sharif
28 killed in US bombings

Islamabad/Washington, November 9
Afghanistan’s Taliban regime today confirmed that forces of the opposition Northern Alliance have entered the strategic northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif.

Quoting unnamed Taliban sources, the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) said the US-led coalition’s heavy bombardment paved the way for opposition troops to enter the city’s southern outskirts.

Earlier, CNN quoted a Northern Alliance general as claiming that anti-Taliban troops had entered the key northern Afghan city and were advancing.

The television reported that about 2,500 troops, under the command of ethnic Uzbek leader General Abdurrashid Dostum, had entered the outskirts of the city after US bombers pounded positions of the ruling Taliban regime south of the city over the past week.

"We are moving through one neighbourhood at a time," opposition spokesman Ashraf Nadeem told the MSNBC network.

He added that troops of the fundamentalist Islamic regime appeared to have abandoned the city, and some reports said the Northern Alliance had already captured the city, taking it in four-and-a-half hours.

The Northern Alliance had recently said it was planning a major assault on Mazar-e-Sharif, considered a strategic location before the US-backed coalition targets the capital, Kabul, and the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar.

The situation on the ground near the important crossroads city of Mazar-e-Sharif is fluid but "encouraging," Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said today.

"At the point where it is taken, it could facilitate a land bridge to Uzbekistan, which could aid movement of humanitarian and other supplies," she told a Pentagon briefing.

Meanwhile, another wave of overnight attacks on Taliban-held areas and frontlines left at least 28 Afghans, including four Taliban fighters, dead and several others injured, a Taliban official in Kabul said today.

Speaking by satellite phone from the embattled capital Kabul, the official told Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA) the US-led air strikes continued this morning with the Taliban positions coming under heavy fire. Agencies