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Posted on 11/12/2001 7:24:50 PM PST by Pericles

Monday November 12 11:02 PM ET

Taliban Bodies on Streets as Opposition Enters Kabul

Afghan opposition forces launched a fierce assault on the Taliban front line just north of Kabul on November 12, 2001, backed by U.S. bombers and a relentless artillery barrage, and said they captured key positions from the fundamentalist militia. Buoyed by the lightning capture in just 72 hours of about 40 percent of the country, the Northern Alliance looked set to try to march on the Afghan capital despite the entrenched Taliban positions arrayed between them and their ultimate prize and U.S. pleas not to enter the city for fear of further bloodshed. (Reuters Graphic)

By Sayed Salahuddin

KABUL (Reuters) - Fighters of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance entered Kabul early on Tuesday to the sound of small-arms fire as dazed residents emerged from their homes to see Taliban bodies on the streets and looters plundering government offices.

``We have taken Kabul,'' shouted one jubilant opposition fighter as he stood with a group of fellow fighters on a street in the city center.

Their vehicles were plastered with photographs of their legendary leader, Ahmad Shah Masood, who was assassinated in a suicide attack just two days before the September 11 hijacked airliner attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

A few bodies of Taliban fighters lay in the streets and sporadic small-arms fire clattered in pockets of the Afghan capital as the opposition Northern Alliance entered.

``Down with the Taliban!'' and ``Welcome the Northern Alliance!'' shouted a few Kabul residents as they realized that the Taliban had pulled out of virtually the entire city in an exodus under cover of night.

Many others appeared dazed and confused, nervous about what to expect if the Northern Alliance had indeed captured the capital.

Small-arms fire erupted in some parts of the city, apparently coming from Taliban who had not managed to leave or had chosen to make a last stand.

Several bodies of Taliban fighters, distinguished by their mandatory black turbans, lay sprawled on streets. Among the dead were a couple of the much-feared foreign fighters, usually Arabs, Pakistanis or Chechens, who make up the backbone of the al Qaeda network of Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden.

The United States launched strikes on the Taliban in retaliation for protecting bin Laden, its prime suspect in the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.

Many Kabul residents were nervous. Several houses were robbed in the night as law and order began to break down.

As dawn broke, and the nighttime curfew imposed by the Taliban ended, residents of one of the most impoverished and war-ravaged capitals on earth plundered government offices in a looting spree.

Residents said some prisoners had also broken out of jails in the city, which appeared to have been abandoned by the Taliban.

``We have taken key government buildings,'' one Northern Alliance fighter said. ``We are chasing the Taliban to the west.''

After darkness fell on Monday, a stream of Taliban tanks, armored personnel carriers and battered pickup trucks could be seen leaving Kabul, heading out on the highway leading west and then south to the militia's stronghold of Kandahar.

The opposition Northern Alliance broke through Taliban front lines outside Kabul on Monday, backed by a fierce artillery barrage and U.S. bombing.

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