UK condemned for rejecting fort massacre inquiry

Amnesty International condemned the British Government yesterday for rejecting an inquiry into the deaths of up to 400 prisoners held by Northern Alliance forces at a fort near the Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif.

An Amnesty spokesman said: "The rejection of an inquiry by the United Kingdom into what is apparently the single most bloody incident of the war, during which serious abuses of international human rights and humanitarian law may have been committed, raises questions about its commitment to the rule of law."

The United Nations high commissioner for human rights, Mary Robinson, joined Amnesty International in calling for an inquiry into the massacres at Qalai Janghi fort, notably into the proportionality of the response by the Northern Alliance, and the US and UK forces who called in air strikes to help crush a revolt by about 600 armed Taliban prisoners. The battles raged for three days.

The Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, said yesterday that the Government saw no need for an inquiry, adding: "This is not some easy Western circumstance. This was in the middle of a terrible situation where law and order had broken down."

The US has also rejected the calls for an investigation. A US spokesman said yesterday that the fort battle "was the result of Taliban prisoners who acquired weapons and changed their status from prisoners to combatants".

New outbreaks of shooting erupted at the fort yesterday, but it was not clear whether it came from prisoners who had survived the fierce battles that also left a CIA agent dead and five US soldiers wounded. The international Red Cross, which was still bringing out bodies from the fort, suspended its work yesterday after two local workers were wounded by the gunfire. A large number of the fort prisoners were Arabs, Pakistanis and Chechens who had surrendered after the fall of the city of Kunduz.

A senior Northern Alliance commander said yesterday that about 2,000 other foreign fighters were still on the run in northern Afghanistan, after escaping from Kunduz when the besieged city fell on Monday.

They are now believed to be at large near Mazar-i-Sharif. Unlike the dead of Qalai Janghi, they refused to surrender to the Northern Alliance.

"We believe there were around 4,000 foreigners in Kunduz and we captured far fewer than that number," said Mohammed Muhaqiq, one of the three senior Northern Alliance generals whose capture of Mazar triggered the collapse of the Taliban across Afghanistan.

The foreign fighters are thought to be travelling in small bands. On the run with them are two senior Afghan Taliban commanders, the ruthless Mullah Dadullah and Mullah Manan Hanafi. Mullah Dadullah, who is believed to have commanded units of foreign Taliban in the past, is travelling around the region in a convoy of 10 pick-ups, Mr Muhaqiq said. He also said that the operation to completely clean Kunduz of foreigners "may last more than a month".

The Northern Alliance believes they have moved on to the district of Chemtal. They appear to have escaped from Kunduz along the road west towards Mazar. But it was not clear how they managed this as the road was supposed to be heavily fortified by Alliance troops under the command of General Rashid Dostum.