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Posted on 11/18/2001 3:06:56 AM PST by callisto

WITH nothing to lose and nowhere to hide, thousands of foreign fighters loyal to the retreating Taliban were trapped inside the northeastern city of Kunduz yesterday, facing certain death in what is shaping up to be the worst bloodbath of the Afghan war.

Opposition forces claimed to have captured senior Taliban leaders in a move that could yield valuable intelligence, as the search for terror mastermind Osama bin Laden continued and the rout of the Taliban escalated.

As the holy month of Ramadan began, and US President George W. Bush sent greetings to the Muslim world, US B-52s bombers pounded the few remaining Taliban positions in northern Afghanistan, consolidating the Northern Alliance's tightening grip on the region.

Kunduz, near the border with Tajikistan, was surrounded as the Northern Alliance blocked all escape routes with tanks, armoured personnel carriers and heavy artillery in preparation for a siege.

Between 2000 and 6000 foreigners – Pakistanis, Arabs, Uighurs from China, Chechens and Uzbeks, recruited from the ranks of hardline Muslims to fight bin Laden's jihad, or holy war – faced slaughter as alliance leaders ordered their fighters to leave no enemy alive.

Until yesterday, the alliance leaders said they were trying to convince the trapped Taliban loyalists to surrender and avoid being massacred. But as the deadline neared, it became clear Kunduz was about to be pounded into the ground as the Taliban supporters stuck to their word to "fight with the last drop of our blood".

Senior officers of the alliance said they had given explicit orders to their troops to shoot every one of the foreign fundamentalists.

Regional alliance commander General Mohammed Dawood Khan said: "We have to separate and distinguish between Afghan Taliban, the local Taliban and the international terrorists who are in Kunduz province.

"We will invite the people to join us and give the low-ranking Taliban the opportunity to appear in a court of law. But we will have no negotiations with the high-ranking terrorists.

"We will not deal with them. They are killers. They assassinated our leader, Ahmed Shah Masood."

An alliance spokesman said yesterday: "We will hang (any captured Taliban) them in the stadium where they hanged our people."

In the face of defeat, local fighters are deserting in droves, resorting to the well-worn Afghan tactic of choosing the winning side, or simply returning to their home villages.

Kunduz is the last northern stronghold of the Taliban, defeated in the rest of the region by the alliance forces, who look set to take control of most of the country as Ramadan begins.

Bin Laden remains on the run but the Pentagon vowed to step up the hunt for the man the US believes was behind the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington. The US Defence Department confirmed leaders of the Taliban and bin Laden's al-Qa'ida terror network were killed in targeted bombing on Kabul and the Taliban's spiritual base, Kandahar.

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