Tue, Nov 20, 2001 page5

• Red Cross says foreign volunteers executed by the Northern Alliance

  VISITING FORCES The group says that at least half of the 30 dead troops found near Kabul on Sunday were shot in the head, indicating that they were likely subject to revenge executions

  • NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
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  Here at a former battlefield outside Kabul, at least half of 30 dead fighters that the the International Committee of the Red Cross found on Sunday had been shot in the head, officials close to the investigation of the deaths said.

  The dead came into Afghanistan from places like Pakistan and Arab nations to fight for the Taliban, the officials said. The Northern Alliance, which took this area from the Taliban last week, particularly loathes those foreign volunteers.

  The fighting took place as Taliban forces retreated from this village, which is outside Kabul and near the strategic Bagram air base.

  Four of the dead appeared to have been executed, with one shot between the eyes and one apparently shot in the side of the head. At least one other had been decapitated.

  The discovery came during the first day that officials from the Red Cross began removing the remains of Taliban soldiers from the front-line trenches that the soldiers of the Northern Alliance swept through last week. The Red Cross, by longstanding custom, does not discuss the nature of wartime killings. The full extent of the killings across Afghanistan will not be known for weeks. Pierre-Andre Junod, a Red Cross official in Kabul, said roughly 70 bodies had been found in the Kabul and Bagram areas. In the city of Mazar-e-Sharif in northern Afghanistan, where executions had been reported, 300 bodies have been recovered, he said. Both of these efforts are continuing.

  During the Northern Alliance attack here, the execution of one prisoner was witnessed by journalists, and the bodies of three men shot in the head were also discovered. One body appeared to have been pulled from a ditch onto a roadside and set on fire.

  Northern Alliance soldiers denied shooting any prisoners and said a rocket was responsible for the decapitation of the Taliban soldier. Officials familiar with the investigation cautioned that the Taliban soldiers could have been shot in the head by passing soldiers after they were dead. But one official said executions might have happened in revenge.

  Taliban forces won control of this village and others in the Shamali Plain area in 1999, and systematically executed citizens and burned their crops.

  "When they took the Shamali Plain, they burned everything," the official said. "They took revenge."

  How many of the deaths were due to execution and how many may have been caused by battlefield injuries may never be known. Junod said the Red Cross, to maintain neutrality, would not detail the nature of the killings. He said the organization was collecting the bodies for humanitarian reasons.

  "These bodies must be buried in a dignified way," Junod said. "Afghans are probably taken by their families. But most of the foreigners have no one to take their bodies."

  The dead soldiers appeared to be from a group of volunteers from Arab countries and neighboring Pakistan who were surrounded in the village after most Afghan Taliban fighters defected.

  Esham, a Northern Alliance commander who led 50 men in the attack, said the Arabs and Pakistanis were killed because they refused to give up. "We told them to please surrender," he said.
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