Associated Press
MAZAR-E-SHARIF, Afghanistan — Hundreds of Osama bin Laden’s foreign legion were killed after staging an uprising with smuggled arms in a Northern Alliance prison Sunday, officials said. U.S. airstrikes helped quash the daylong insurrection.
A U.S. special forces soldier inside the fortress was taped by a German television crew saying an American may have been killed, but the Pentagon said later that all U.S. forces in Afghanistan had been accounted for and that none had died.
The U.S. Central Command, which oversees the war in Afghanistan, declined to say whether U.S. forces were inside the Qalai Janghi fortress when the fighting began.
The fighters, about 300 Chechens, Pakistanis and Arabs who surrendered Saturday from the besieged city of Kunduz, had smuggled weapons under their tunics into the fortress and tried to fight their way out, Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Dan Stoneking said.
The alliance said most of the prisoners were killed.
The uprising began about
11 a.m., witnesses said. Alliance spokesman Zaher Wahadat said the prisoners seized other weapons from their guards and captured an ammunition depot, using its contents to fight the troops sent in to put down the revolt.
Yahsaw, a spokesman for Northern Alliance commander Mohammed Mohaqik, said the prisoners broke down the doors and tried to escape.
As outnumbered guards perched on the compound’s walls fired wildly down at the prisoners, a U.S. special forces soldier could be seen in footage by a Germany television crew using a telephone to call in airstrikes and reinforcements.
"There’s hundreds dead here at least," the man, who identified himself only as David, can be heard saying on Germany’s ARD television network.
The soldiers appeared to have planned the battle, Central Command spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Dave Culler said, describing it as an apparent "suicide mission."
For several hours the firefight continued between the hundreds of prisoners and what ARD said were only 100 guards.
Gen. Rashid Dostum, who controls the compound but was overseeing the surrender at Kunduz when the uprising began, returned several hours later with tanks and machine guns. Stoneking said 500 troops accompanied him.
The airstrikes began about the same time, witnesses said. American warplanes streaked overhead, dropping bombs onto the southern part of the compound, where the prisoners were.
By 6 p.m., Wahadat said, the compound was under control and most of the prisoners were dead.
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