The Taliban agreed yesterday to surrender their last northern stronghold, including thousands of Arabs and other foreign fighters loyal to Osama bin Laden, Northern Alliance commanders said. However, details about how the foreigners will be treated remain to be settled.
Fighting erupted along the frontline near the Taliban stronghold, Kunduz, even as the agreement to surrender the city was announced. However, Alliance officials blamed the fighting on communications problems and insisted the deal had not fallen through.
Anti-Taliban tanks rolled across the front line and Taliban shells crashed near refugees fleeing the besieged city. The Taliban held out in Kunduz after they abandoned the capital Kabul and most of the country this month following punishing US airstrikes.
A senior alliance commander, Atta Mohammed, said by satellite telephone that the surrender agreement came late Thursday afternoon in a meeting with top Taliban commanders, including Deputy Defense Minister Mullah Fazil.
Ashraf Nadeem, a spokesman for Mohammed, said the alliance would send 5,000 fighters to Kunduz, "possibly Saturday" to oversee the surrender of the Taliban.
"We told them, `You are safe. We can transfer you to your provinces,'" Mohammed said.
The fate of foreign fighters with the Taliban in Kunduz remained to be worked out in talks set for Friday in the alliance-held city of Mazar-i-Sharif, Nadeem said. He said the Taliban had agreed to surrender the foreigners but wanted guarantees about their treatment.
The issue of the foreigners fighting alongside the Taliban had been the main obstacle to a surrender deal for days. The foreigners -- mostly Arabs, Pakistanis and Chechens -- feared they would be killed like other bin Laden fighters in other areas which have fallen under northern alliance control.
The US is pressuring the Alliance against accepting any deal which might allow them to escape. Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, is also anxious to avoid the slaughter of Pakistanis even though his government supports the US-led war against terrorism.
Nadeem said Taliban negotiators were willing to surrender the foreigners but wanted assurances they would not be massacred. The Taliban insisted that both sides agree on such details as how the foreigners would be treated if the alliance puts them on trial, he said.
Mohammed Daoud, a senior northern alliance commander, said the fighting broke out yesterday afternoon when Taliban forces -- not knowing about the surrender agreement -- tried to prevent about 200 of their fighters from surrendering to the northern alliance just east of Kunduz.
Taliban leaders Noorallah Noori and Mullah Fazil had not yet returned from Mazar-i-Sharif with word of the agreement, Daoud said.
"They didn't know," he said. "The negotiations had finished in Mazar-i-Sharif but they didn't know about the result."
In a possible response to the Taliban's assault, Northern Alliance fighters streamed toward the frontline in trucks, tanks and on foot and commanders already at the front led troops on mountain paths closer to Taliban positions. Alliance forces fired artillery and rockets toward the city.
"When we conquer Kunduz, make sure you get some of the cars," one commander told a line of men trudging through the dust and mud of an abandoned front-line village.
As the shells fell, refugees streaming out of Kunduz by foot, donkey and car dashed for cover, some women in head-to-toe white shrouds flapping around them. One group of women, confused, dived into a ditch exposed to the incoming mortar fire, their fingers tearing desperately at the dirt as shells pounded around them.
"The United States is bombing and the people are escaping," said refugee Mahmedi, breathless and too much in a hurry to stop to talk. "The city is empty."
Refugees said they were escaping both the anger of foreign fighters trapped in the city and the US bombs.
Several refugees said US bombs hit three mud houses in a front-line village Tuesday, killing many civilians. One refugee, who said he helped bury the dead, put the toll at 40. Their reports could not be confirmed.
A US-led coalition launched attacks on the Taliban on Oct. 7 after they refused to hand over bin Laden, the chief suspect in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the US.
In Islamabad, Musharraf urged the Red Cross to do all it can to prevent massacres of foreign fighters at the hands of the Afghans, delivering the appeal to the visiting president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Jakob Kellenberger.
After the meeting, Kellenberger said the organization is not in a position to help arrange any safety guarantees. "It cannot get involved in political negotiations on conditions of a surrender," he told reporters.
A surrender in Kunduz would leave only one major city -- the southern base of Kandahar -- in Taliban hands. Taliban spokesman Syed Tayyab Agha vowed that the Taliban would fight to defend Kandahar, their spiritual base, and the surrounding provinces they still control.
The Taliban's isolation grew further yesterday when Pakistan informed the staff of the Afghan Embassy in Islamabad -- the last Taliban post outside Afghanistan -- that it should shut down. Diplomats came to their offices early in the morning, but left after a few minutes, embassy official Mufti Yousuf said.
"We are delighted to know that Pakistan is severing diplomatic relations with the Taliban," coalition spokesman Kenton Keith said in Islamabad.
US service personnel held Thanksgiving celebrations in the region even as their war effort continued.
In the Arabian Sea, the crew of the USS Theodore Roosevelt said prayers and watched Miami Dolphins cheerleaders wave pompoms to the tune of James Brown's Living in America.
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