Opposition forces smashed Taliban front lines Monday and pushed into the hills above Kabul after decisive victories in northern Afghanistan, but did not attack the prized capital amid US demands for restraint, said reports.
Shouting "God is great," anti-Taliban troops rolled within 12 miles of Kabul on trucks carrying the green, white and black Afghan flag and displaying pictures of their assassinated commander, Ahmed Shah Massood, according to AP.
The ruling Islamic militia, meanwhile, was ringing the city with tanks to defend it against an all-out attack, said the agency.
The BBC reported that rebel troops had reached within a mere four miles of the capital, and had reportedly taken control of the key western city of Herat.
Backed by US bombing, Northern Alliance troops crashed through two lines of Taliban trenches north of Kabul, leaving only the final defences on the city's outskirts, and the news service reported dozens of Taleban tanks leaving the capital.
Military analysts have speculated that the Taliban may be retreating to areas further south, where its base among Pashtun tribesmen is considered much stronger than in the more ethnically diverse north.
In a sign that order might be breaking down, there were reports of mass arrests and executions in the streets of the recently captured city of Mazar-e-Sharif, and a UN spokeswoman in Islamabad said the rebel troops seized a UN aid convoy and looted one of its warehouses.
Meanwhile, the Northern Alliance appeared to have given in to US demands that it hold off on assualting the capital, amid fears of reigniting tribal wars that raged in the early 1990s.
"We have no intention of going into Kabul," Haron Amin, a Washington-based envoy for the alliance, was quoted as saying by AP. "The United Nations must first come up with a plan for dividing power in Afghanistan after the Taliban falls," he said.
Amin said Monday that the anti-Taliban forces would try to surround Kabul, which sits surrounded by the foothills of the Hindu Kush mountains, to prevent the Taliban from reinforcing or resupplying their troops inside, added the agency.
"We have decided to defend Kabul," the Taliban ambassador to neighboring Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef, said in Islamabad, quoted by AP. "It is true that the opposition breached our front line near Kabul, but we have erected another one and are strengthening our position."
JOURNALISTS KILLED WHILE COVERING WAR
Three Western journalists died covering the fighting over the weekend, according to reports.
Two French radio reporters and a German magazine journalist were killed when they came under Taliban fire while traveling with opposition troops, their employers and colleagues said Monday, according to AP.
Radio France Internationational reporter Johanne Sutton, RTL radio reporter Pierre Billaud and Volker Hadloik, a reporter for the German magazine Stern, were killed in an ambush Sunday after leaving Northern Alliance military headquarters near the Tajikistan border, said ABCNEWS Online.
They are believed to be the first foreign journalists killed in the country since US-led strikes on targets in Afghanistan began last month, added the news service.
POST-TALIBAN GOVERNMENT IN THE WORKS
The flurry of dipolomatic activity to assemble a regime to replace the Taliban is going full-force, according to international reports.
French President Jacques Chirac is on a three-nation Arab tour expected to focus on Afghanistan's political future and the Middle East peace process in Cairo with talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, reported ABCNEWS Online.
After talks with Mubarak, he was due to leave immediately for meetings in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, added the news service.
"I wanted to go to Riyadh...to consult with King Fahd and Crown Prince Abdullah on the political future of Afghanistan and the crisis in the Middle East," he said in an interview with the Arabic-language newspaper Al Hayat.
At the UN, the United States, Russia and six nations bordering Afghanistan pledged "to establish a broad-based Afghan administration on an urgent basis," said AP.
The aim is to put together a transitional leadership that is broadly acceptable, possibly including Taliban defectors, reported the agency.
AP cited US officials as saying that the UN might take interim control of the capital, and Muslim and non-Muslim nations were likely to join with Turkey in providing peacekeepers - Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
