US and British commandos help Alliance in Mazar-e-Sharif
US and British special forces helped Northern Alliance fighters battling captured loyalists of Osama bin Laden for a third day today in a sprawling mud-walled fortress in northern Afghanistan.
US warplanes circled high above the Qalai Janghi fortress, where Taliban prisoners captured in the siege of Kunduz last weekend rained rocket-propelled grenades and mortars on alliance troops trying to suppress the uprising.
Witnesses reported heavy air strikes on the fortress overnight.
Desert camouflage-clad US special forces troops and soldiers who appeared to be British moved in and out of the fort, some carrying Kalashnikov assault rifles, others with guns fitted with laserscopes.
Trucks carrying 200 Northern Alliance fighters and an anti-aircraft gun arrived at the fortress this morning.
‘‘We have come to help the other soldiers,’’ said Karim Pahlawan, a Northern Alliance commander.
Five US soldiers were seriously wounded yesterday when a US JDAM smart bomb called in by special forces went astray, exploding near the Americans.
The five were evacuated to nearby Uzbekistan and were being taken to Landstuhl Medical Centre in Ramstein, Germany, General Richard Myers, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in Washington. Their identities were not released.
One CIA operative was unaccounted for in the uprising, according to another US official.
Hundreds of Pakistanis, Chechens, Arabs and other non-Afghans fighting with the Taliban were brought to the fortress here as part of the weekend surrender of Kunduz, the Islamic militia’s last stronghold in the north.
Once inside the fortress on Sunday, the prisoners stormed the armoury and were still resisting two days later despite US air strikes and attacks by alliance forces.
Prisoners fired mortars from inside the fortress, and tank and machine-gun fire could be heard. Mortar shells exploded around the complex, sending up billowing clouds of dust and smoke, and an enormous blast shook windows in Mazar-e-Sharif, 10 miles away.
Some Taliban prisoners could be seen climbing trees, and Northern Alliance fighters entered the fortress in shifts, 10 at a time.
‘‘When will it be over? Only God knows,’’ said Tella Arab, a Northern Alliance fighter waiting outside the fortress.
One photographer saw the bodies of eight Northern Alliance soldiers and about six wounded alliance fighters outside the fort today. The bodies of three escaped Taliban prisoners, who appeared to be Pakistanis, lay in a ditch, and villagers said one of them had been strangled with a rope.
A local villager, laughing, picked up the body by the robe and kicked it in head. Another posed over the body, holding a knife.
Alliance officers said about 40 of their troops had died in the uprising along with hundreds of resisters. Alliance commanders said the holdouts, trapped in a tower, were running out of ammunition and wouldn’t last long.
‘‘Those who are left over will be dead,’’ said Alim Razim, an aide to the Northern Alliance commander, General Rashid Dostum, who is responsible for controlling the fortress. ‘‘None of them can escape.’’
