Food running out for al-Qaida soldiers in hospital siege
Food is running out for seven al-Qaida members holed up in a hospital near Kandahar, anti-Taliban soldiers say.
The besieged troops have a small arsenal they are threatening to use to blow up themselves and anyone who tries to arrest them.
The Kandahar security force says the siege would be over already but the US insists the men are taken alive.
The troops, armed with automatic weapons and a machine gun mounted on a bipod aimed in the direction of the besieged hospital rooms, say they expect the month-old standoff to end within a week.
"The US wants us to take them alive. It would be easy to finish it now, but they would all die," said Fazil Bali, a commander with the Kandahar security force.
He says the men's food is running out, and one doctor says it may already be finished.
The men have said they will kill themselves if anyone tries to take them from Mir Wais hospital, where they were dropped off by comrades as Kandahar fell to anti-Taliban forces a month ago.
Some are believed to be uninjured, while others were wounded by US bombing or in fighting with Afghan tribal forces opposed to the Taliban.
Two al-Qaida men taken from the hospital earlier in the week were both Chinese, said Bali, presumably militant Uighurs, who are demanding outright independence for their Muslim-dominated northwestern province of China.
The nationalities of the seven men still holed up in the hospital, in the heart of Kandahar, are not known.
