Alliance says Kunduz has been captured

A northern alliance commander says his forces have captured Kunduz, but the final seizure of the city may not come till tomorrow. It is reported that different alliance forces are discussing who should take control.

The commander, Mohammed Daoud, said Taliban forces were in retreat toward Chardara west of Kunduz and alliance forces were pursuing them.

An alliance spokesman had earlier claimed that foreign defenders were surrendering "continuously".

Kunduz was defended by Taliban and foreign fighters, some loyal to Osama bin Laden, and it had been feared that the bin Laden loyalists might prefer death to surrender. Refugees and witnesses said early on in the siege that the foreigners killed Taliban troops who tried to give up.

Pakistan's president, General Pervez Musharraf, has appealed to international organizations, the United States and Britain to prevent massacres of Pakistani fighters, many of whom went to Afghanistan after the bombing campaign began to join the Taliban side.

The fall of Kunduz would mark the loss of the last Taliban citadel in the north of Afghanistan, leaving the Islamic militia with a stronghold only in the southern city of Kandahar. Over the past three weeks, the Taliban have lost three-quarters of their territory.

First word of the alliance presence in Kunduz came from alliance spokesman Ashraf Nadeem, interviewed by satellite telephone from the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif, near the city's western front. He identified the first commander in as Mir Alam.

Later, a report said about 2,500 troops of another alliance commander, Gen. Rashid Dostum, had taken control of the city center after entering from the west. The report by the Aghan Islamic Press could not be independently confirmed. It said Dostum himself was expected to arrive in the city later in the day.

Kunduz has been under siege by the alliance for the past 12 days, defended by Taliban and foreign fighters, some loyal to Osama bin Laden.

As Alam entered the city, the defenders were giving up in droves without a fight, alliance spokesman Zaher Wasik said.

"A lot of Taliban are surrendering. Continuously they are coming to us. There is no fighting," he said, adding that alliance soldiers were converging on Kunduz from all directions.

Wasik said the top Taliban commander, Noorallah Noori, had given himself up and was in Mazar-e-Sharif.

The northern alliance press office in neighboring Tajikistan said about 900 defenders had surrendered overnight. "God willing, it will be over by this evening," it said in a statement.

A short time before alliance troops were reported to have entered the city, alliance commander Gen. Daoud Khan had told reporters that if Kunduz' defenders didn't surrender on Sunday, the city would be taken by force.

Asked what would happen if the Taliban and foreign forces didn't give up, he replied: "Fighting."

Nadeem said from Mazar-e-Sharif that foreigners were among those who fled the city overnight, some of them accompanied by Taliban troops.

More than 1,100 fighters from the Taliban side had turned themselves in by nightfall Saturday. The Afghans among them were welcomed like brothers by northern alliance troops, with kisses and embraces; the foreigners were taken off to a detention center.

When the siege of Kunduz began on 12 November, alliance commanders estimated about 10,000 Taliban troops and 3,000 foreigners were defending the city, the last Taliban citadel in the north of Afghanistan.

It was unclear whether the hard core of foreign fighters loyal to bin Laden - most of them Arabs, Chechens or Pakistanis - would opt to fight to the finish. At least one staged a suicide surrender on Saturday - giving up, then setting off a hand grenade when waiting to be searched. Two of his comrades were killed, and an alliance officer seriously hurt.

A former Taliban deputy interior minister who defected - the most senior Taliban defector thus far - on Saturday said he blamed bin Laden and his foreign fighters as well as extremist Taliban for bringing on the U.S.-led war.

"I have being saying for a long time that the foreigners have to leave our country, that they have plans of their own and are destroying our country," Mullah Mohammed Khaqzar told reporters in Kabul, the capital.

Khaqzar said he warned Taliban supreme leader Mohammed Omar that he should "tell the terrorists to leave" or they "would destroy our country." But Omar fell under the influence of bin Laden, he said.

Under the surrender agreement near Kunduz, Afghan Taliban fighters were guaranteed safe passage out of the city, but the foreigners were being arrested pending investigation into possible ties to bin Laden.

The United States had strongly opposed any agreement that would allow the foreign fighters to go free. President George W. Bush launched airstrikes against Afghanistan on Oct. 7 after the Taliban refused to hand over bin Laden for his alleged role in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

On Saturday, US jets bombed an area near the eastern city of Jalalabad, where bin Laden maintained camps. Anti-Taliban officials in the area said bin Laden was near Jalalabad when the bombing campaign began and may be hiding near his Tora Bora camp in the mountains.

Alliance commanders had expected the surrender of Kunduz to take place this weekend - and as the day passed, more and more Taliban fighters appeared along front-line positions to give themselves up.

"We gave up to the Northern Alliance," said a smiling Taliban fighter, Shah Mahmoud, who defected on the eastern front. "They are our brothers, and this is our country. The foreigners will never surrender, I think."