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Northern Alliance Admits Massacre of 520 Soldiers
MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Nov 16 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Northern Alliance (NA) soldiers admitted Thursday they had killed hundreds of pro-Taliban fighters holed up in a school, providing the first direct evidence of massacres by the victorious opposition forces.
An ITN journalist went to the school in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif where the bodies of 520 mostly Pakistani fighters were still being brought out from the rubble Thursday - three days after the massacre, reported the British
Independent newspaper.
The standoff between the forces of the veteran Uzbek commander General Abdul Rashid Dostum and more than 700 fighters lasted throughout last weekend after Alliance forces captured the strategic city Friday. According to the Alliance, the firefights at the school intensified when pro-Taliban fighters refused to surrender.
"They [the Northern Alliance] claim they sent elders into the school to try and persuade them to give themselves up. When they wouldn't, the Northern Alliance went in with tanks," said the
Independent.
Dostum's forces, reputed for their brutality from previous spells in power in Mazar crushed the resistance. "I saw those tanks today and they demolished most of the school," a reporter said, quoted by the paper.
The Red Cross was bringing out bodies on stretchers from the ruins of the school Thursday. Reports had been circulating since Monday that Pakistani fighters had been massacred after surrendering, but the British television crew was the first to confirm what happened by talking to NA soldiers.
They did not deny having killed the 520 fighters, but refused to describe their actions as a massacre. "They are saying that they were, in fact, trying to make these men give up," the same reporter said.
Human Rights Watch pointed out Thursday that it had to be established whether the Pakistani fighters were killed after surrendering or not. If they were already prisoners or had expressed their intention to surrender, this would constitute a war crime by the Northern Alliance, the organization said, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
In a further chilling move, Alliance troops based in a building across the street from the school displayed 42 Taliban prisoners who had been kept inside a freight container in the dark - traditionally the Alliance's detention center of choice for Taliban prisoners.
With Northern Alliance troops taking over Kabul and other major Afghan cities, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have voiced their concern over the "long record of human rights abuses" by leaders of the Alliance.
"The U.S. and its allies should not cooperate with commanders whose record of brutality raises questions about their legitimacy inside Afghanistan," said Sidney Jones, executive director of the Asia division of Human Rights Watch. "Any country that gives assistance to the Afghan opposition must take responsibility for how this assistance is used."
Human Rights Watch urged in particular that no cooperation be extended to Abdul Rashid Dostum, the head of the Junbish militia; Haji Muhammad Muhaqqiq, a senior commander of Hizb-i Wahdat; Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, leader of the erstwhile Ittihad-i Islami; and Abdul Malik Pahlawan, a former senior Junbish commander.
"Not a single Afghan commander has been held accountable for human rights abuses," said Jones. "The time to break this cycle of impunity is now, and the United States and its allies will have the leverage to do it."
Afghan opposition forces on Friday gave assurances to Iran they would respect international conventions, the state news agency IRNA reported Friday.
The Northern Alliance "has been advised to avoid violence," Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi said in a meeting at the United Nations on Thursday with his British counterpart Jack Straw, IRNA said.
"The Northern Alliance has assured it will act according to Islamic rules and international conventions," Kharazi was quoted as saying.
Meanwhile, AFP reported that local tribes were clouding prospects for a unified government by grabbing new chunks of territory.
Local forces claimed control of the home province of Taliban chief Mullah Mohammed Omar while pressing efforts to negotiate the surrender of the Taliban's spiritual home of Kandahar in the south.
In Kunduz, on the other side of the country in the far north, a local commander issued "surrender or die" orders to as many as 30,000 Taliban fighters digging in for a desperate last stand.
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