Taliban fighters killing themselves
Press Trust of India
Islamabad, November 18: A grim situation prevailed in the northern Afghan town of Kunduz with hundreds of Taliban fighters, holed up in the besieged city, killing each other to avoid capture by the advancing Northern Alliance troops.
About 60 Chechen fighters drowned themselves in the nearby Amu river, while a Northern Alliance commander said 25 trapped Taliban fighters fatally shot one another when they saw opposition troops advancing towards them, CNN network reported on Sunday quoting sources.
Meanwhile, reports from London said Osama bin Laden's elite al Qaeda guard, mainly consisting of Arabs and Pakistanis, are slaughtering Taliban troops to prevent them from surrendering to the Northern Alliance army.
In the first eye-witness accounts of life inside the city, escaping civilians on Saturday night told The Sunday Telegraph that an Arab al Qaeda commander had ordered the massacre of 150 Afghan Talibs who wanted to defect. Taliban and al Qaeda were forcing local men to fight for them, and beating or killing them if they refused.
Mohammed Ibrahim, 50, who escaped from the city on Saturday, said: "A commander who was foreign gave the order for 150 local Afghan Taliban to be killed because they wanted to surrender. They showed them no mercy." The massacre, according to the eyewitness account, took place on Friday and followed the defection of 1,000 Afghan Talibs under Gen Mirai Nasery, a local commander. Al Qaeda soldiers had arrested more than 100 prominent Kunduz citizens and were holding them hostage to stall an Alliance attack. |
