Herald news services
Afghanistan’s opposition forces, some charging Taliban tanks on horseback, pressed their offensive on strategic Mazar-e-Sharif on Wednesday, capturing a key hilltop and moving their southern front to within 10 miles of the northern city.
In Washington, D.C., Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace confirmed that U.S. special forces teams were with opposition forces near Mazar-e-Sharif “to help in directing airstrikes.” The general said the American soldiers reported the cavalry charges. “These folks are aggressive,” he said of the alliance.
He said the fighting was “very fluid” and that the opposition appeared to be making progress. Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said of the alliance fighters: “They’re taking the war to their enemy and ours.”
“I hope we will take the city in four to five days,” said Haji Muhammad Muqiq, interior minister for the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance. “This is war. We can’t be certain if we will take the city. But that is our desire.”
A Northern Alliance commander claimed that 100 Taliban soldiers had been killed and 100 captured and then released; his count could not be verified.
“They were released because they were local Taliban. This shows that we are humanitarian people,” he said. He also spoke by satellite telephone from the region. In addition, he added, three Taliban commanders had defected to the Northern Alliance, along with 300 fighters.
Seizing Mazar-e-Sharif, which was captured by the Taliban in 1998, could open important northern supply lines for anti-Taliban forces and humanitarian groups and isolate fighters of the fundamentalist Islamic regime. The city also has two airfields that could be used for U.S. military operations.
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