Associated Press

Northern Alliance fighters watch a U.S. airstrike against Taliban positions near the town of Khanabad in Afghanistan's Kunduz province yesterday. Kunduz is the Taliban's sole remaining stronghold in northern Afghanistan, which is under siege by troops of the opposition northern alliance.

NEW YORK - Defenders of the last Taliban stronghold in northern Afghanistan offered yesterday to surrender if the opposition alliance guarantees the safety of Arabs, Pakistanis and other foreigners fighting with them, an opposition commander said.

The offer to give up control of Kunduz came after U.S. B-52s led a day of intense bombing on Taliban positions outside the city, sending huge fireballs skyward.

Elsewhere in Afghanistan, a private news agency said U.S. bombardment of Taliban positions in their home base of Kandahar in the south and outside the eastern city of Jalalabad had killed more than 70 people overnight. The reports could not be independently confirmed.

Refugees fleeing the city of Kunduz over the weekend, meanwhile, told of terror at the hands of Taliban troops and bin Laden loyalists. One described a doctor shot and killed for not treating a wounded Taliban fast enough, and others said eight teenage boys were killed for laughing at Taliban soldiers.

Witnesses also said at least 100 Taliban soldiers were shot, apparently by gunmen from their own side, as they approached northern alliance lines in an attempt to surrender.

Yesterday evening, an opposition commander said the Taliban had offered to surrender Kunduz if the alliance guaranteed that non-Afghans fighting alongside them would not be killed and if the surrender were witnessed by U.N. representatives.

There are an estimated 3,000 non-Afghans fighting with the Taliban in Kunduz, including Arabs believed to be affiliated with bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorist network as well as Pakistanis.

The conditional surrender offer was reported by an opposition commander, Nahidullah, who said it was made during negotiations conducted by radio with the Taliban.

There was no immediate word whether the opposition alliance has accepted the offer.

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Colin Powell said the northern alliance had agreed to take part in U.N.-brokered talks about forming a new power-sharing government in Afghanistan.

The head of the alliance, Burhanuddin Rabbani, said Saturday his group supported such a conference but wanted it to take place in Kabul. The United Nations favors a neutral site.

The United States has been putting heavy pressure on the northern alliance, whose troops took over Kabul and overran much of the country last week, to share power with other factions and to compromise on the venue.

Powell expressed hopes the meeting organized by the top U.N. envoy for Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, would take place in days. He did not say where it would be held - but the northern alliance signaled willingness to drop its previous insistence that the meeting be in Kabul.

"We've got to get this moving," Powell said on "Fox News Sunday."

The latest American bombardment of Taliban lines outside Kunduz used the largest bombs yet unleashed in the area. Flames shot into the air, and cracking booms echoed across the valley floor toward the northern alliance's own foxholes in opposing ridges. Avalanches of soil cascaded down the targeted hillsides.

Taliban soldiers could be seen running out on the distant ridges, trying to find cover.

Northern alliance forces had moved a multiple-rocket launcher and two tanks up to the road that is the eastern approach to Kunduz, but there was no sign an attack was imminent.

Refugees fleeing Kunduz over the past several days have said the city is under the control of Arab, Pakistani, Chechen and other foreign fighters - and a hard core of Taliban fighters from Kandahar.

In and near Bangi, a village about 30 miles east of Kunduz, refugees gave chilling accounts of conditions inside the city.

The Taliban were barring people from leaving, telling them, "If you leave the USA will bomb all the city," said a refugee named Dar Zardad. He said he made it out of the city only after Taliban beat him with their rifle butts.

Zardad described the killing in Kunduz of a group of boys in their late teens by Taliban from Kandahar after some of the youths laughed at them. He and others also recounted how troops shot and killed a doctor when he delayed responding to their summons to come treat wounded Taliban fighters.

Refugees said people of the city were hiding indoors and closing their shops for fear of summary execution by the Taliban. Foreign fighters, using local translators, were broadcasting loudspeaker announcements saying they would be taking the offensive against northern alliance troops laying siege to the city.

The reports of bombings in eastern Nangarhar province and in Kandahar came from the Afghan Islamic Press. It said the Nangarhar raid killed 30 people, and quoted a Pakistani official at the nearby Torkham border crossing as saying seven wounded were brought to Pakistan for treatment.

It also said U.S. jets struck targets around Kandahar, killing 46 people, as the stalemate continued over control of the Taliban stronghold.

In the capital, Kabul, U.N. envoy Francesc Vendrell held preliminary talks over the process of setting up a new Afghan government.

Rabbani returned to Kabul on Saturday for the first time in five years. Rabbani has never relinquished his claim to the presidency, though he has acknowledged the international calls for a broad-based government that would include all of Afghanistan's ethnic groups.

Vendrell said he had a preliminary meeting with Rabbani's acting foreign minister, Abdullah, yesterday. He described the exchange as "cordial" but said no outstanding issues were resolved.

However, Abdullah told a news conference later in the Uzbekistan capital, Tashkent, that talks on forming a post-Taliban government could be held outside Afghanistan.