MAZAR-E-SHARIF, Afghanistan - Northern alliance forces and U.S. airstrikes put down a prison uprising yesterday by foreign pro-Taliban captives from the northern city of Kunduz, U.S. and alliance spokesmen said. The alliance and a member of the U.S. special forces at the scene said hundreds of foreign fighters were killed.
The prisoners were mostly Pakistanis, Chechens and Arabs believed loyal to Osama bin Laden. Alliance spokesman Zaher Wahadat said they seized weapons from their guards and captured an ammunition depot, using it to fight the troops deployed to put down the unrest.
A Pentagon spokesman said about 300 fighters took part in the riot, which was put down with U.S. airstrikes and fighters of northern alliance Gen. Rashid Dostum, who controls the Qalai Janghi fortress where the riot took place.
"They were all killed and very few were arrested," Wahadat said.
Footage from a German television crew that was inside the compound, 10 miles west of Mazar-e-Sharif, showed guards atop walls firing down into crowds of prisoners below.
As tanks rolled into the compound, a member of the U.S. special forces who identified himself only as David could be seen on a telephone calling in air strikes, the footage from the ARD network showed.
"There's hundreds dead here at least," he could be overheard saying.
Yahsaw, a spokesman for northern alliance commander Mohammed Mohaqik, said the prisoners broke down the doors and tried to escape, then battled all day with guards at the Qalai Janghi fortress.
The Pentagon spokesman, Lt. Col. Dan Stoneking, confirmed that some U.S. special forces were in the compound when the fighting broke out, and said "it appears all U.S. personnel are accounted for" and believed safe.
Stoneking said the fighting involved about 300 "hard-core Taliban" prisoners, most of them from Pakistan and Chechnya. He said some of the fighters had smuggled weapons into the prison compound and began fighting northern alliance forces.
"There was general pandemonium," said Simon Brooks, head of Red Cross operations for northern Afghanistan, who was at the prison to check on the detainees' condition when gunfire rang out.
Dostum brought in about 500 of his troops and quashed the riot with the help of air strikes from U.S. forces, Stoneking said.
Explosions could still be heard from the direction of the compound yesterday evening, and gunfire could be heard on the streets of Mazar-e-Sharif.
Brooks said he fled from the compound by climbing onto the roof with northern alliance commanders, and when he returned in the afternoon he found three men with serious injuries making their way toward Mazar-e-Sharif.
He couldn't get close to the prison because U.S. air strikes were targeting the southern part of the compound, where the prisoners were being held, he said.
The prisoners had surrendered outside of the nearby city of Kunduz, which the northern alliance claimed to have captured yesterday, under a deal aimed at ending a 12-day siege by the alliance. Under the deal, they were to be imprisoned and investigated for ties to bin Laden's al-Qaida network.
Foreign fighters in Kunduz had insisted on security guarantees following reports of summary executions by the northern alliance in Mazar-e-Sharif and Kabul.
Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, has repeatedly appealed to the United States and Britain to prevent massacres of Pakistani fighters, many of whom went to Afghanistan after the bombing campaign began.
But the spokesman for Pakistan's military-led government, Gen. Rashid Quereshi, said last night that it was too early to comment on the uprising.
"We are not even sure whether there were any Pakistanis there," he said. "We don't have any presence in Afghanistan. We have to check the facts first before making any comments."
