Nov 10?The triumphant Afghan opposition said they swept Taliban forces from four more northern provinces on Saturday, a day after routing the militia in strategic Mazar-i-Sharif in the first major victory of the U.S.-led war.
The Taliban conceded they had lost the city to the Northern Alliance in their biggest blow since U.S. air strikes began 35 days ago to flush out Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden, blamed for the suicide hijack attacks in the United States in September that killed some 4,600 people.
Pakistan's Dawn newspaper quoted bin Laden as making the startling claim that he had nuclear and chemical weapons and was ready to unleash them in response to U.S. attacks. The authenticity of the interview could not be verified.
Mazar-i-Sharif could give U.S. forces a base, since it has the main airport in northern Afghanistan. It also would let them supply the poorly equipped alliance forces to the south as the city straddles routes between the capital Kabul and Uzbekistan.
"Yes, Mazar has gone," Taliban Defence Minister Obaidullah Akhund told Reuters in a brief interview.
Forces of ethnic Uzbek warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostum entered the city late on Friday as Taliban fighters fled, coming under blistering attack from U.S. warplanes and leaving in their tracks burnt-out trucks and armoured personnel carriers, said Northern Alliance spokesman Ashraf Nadeem.
Opposition troops swept east into Samangan province, leaving a pocket of Taliban fighters in Tashgurghan town, and took three western provinces after fierce fighting and the capture of many Taliban fighters, including Pakistanis, commanders said.
"Today we have captured Samangan, Sara-i-Pol, Faryab and Jowzjan provinces," Dostum told Reuters by satellite telephone.
He said the northern border with Uzbekistan that snakes along the Amu Darya river?the Oxus of the ancients -- remained closed but was under his control.
United Nations aid agencies could return, Nadeem said.
Dostum said his troops were advancing on western Badghis -- a move that would allow him to join up with those of mujahideen General Ismail Khan near the strategic western city of Herat.
A spokesman for Khan, Sayed Naseer Mohammad, said they were planning a Sunday night attack on Qala-i-Nau, the capital of Badghis that sits on the road from Mazar-i-Sharif to Herat.
Herat, in turn, is on the main road to southern Kandahar, power base of Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.
Shi'ite Commander Ustad Mohakik told Reuters the Northern Alliance, a disparate group of friends and former foes, killed 500 Taliban in 24 hours of battles in the north.
"In some areas there was strong resistance, others fell without much fighting," he said.
Those numbers, as well as the gains, were impossible to verify and both sides often exaggerate battlefield death tolls.
Taliban officials denied they had lost the provinces, AIP said.
The opposition had captured many Taliban fighters, including Pakistanis, Mohakik said, adding that prisoners would not be harmed and Taliban who surrendered would be treated well.
"We will keep them for future prisoner swaps," he said.
The Taliban forces had regrouped at Tashgurghan, some 60 km (40 miles) east of Mazar-i-Sharif, but it was not clear what they hoped to achieve, Mohakik said.
Alliance Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah told reporters in northern Khoja Bahawuddin his forces were eager to take the town of Taloqan that could open the way to Tajikistan, where stockpiles of Russian weapons await a route to the Alliance.
Northern Alliance Interior Minister Yunis Qanuni told Reuters the local population, mainly ethnic Uzbeks who have little love for the mostly ethnic Pashtun Taliban, aided his forces.
"The people of Mazar-i-Sharif helped us. They captured some of the Pakistani and Arab soldiers and handed them over to us," he said, referring to foreign fighters of bin Laden's al Qaeda network who are thought to number several thousand in the north.
Taliban Information Ministry official Abdul Hanan Himat said the militia, which faced a relentless eight-day U.S. bombardment, was preparing a counterattack to retake the city.
"For the protection of our forces, our war machine and equipment and prevention of civilian casualties, the leadership ...and the Defence Ministry deemed it necessary to pull out," he said, adding the retreat was orderly and without casualties.
The city was for more than a decade the base of Dostum before taken by the Taliban three years ago. Civilians were hacked to death in that 1998 battle as the Taliban avenged their bloodiest defeat when they tried to capture the city in 1997.
Within hours, U.S. jets resumed their punishing raids on front lines near Kabul and in the far north, witnesses said.
Frontline fighters also engaged the Taliban with heavy artillery fire near Deshtiqala in the north near Tajikistan.
Planes dropped more than 20 bombs on trenches some 200 metres from the opposition-held Bagram airport, 25 km (15 miles) north of Kabul, as about a dozen tanks rolled forward.
Hundreds of troops, backed by tanks and artillery, had been deployed at the airport in a planned assault to take nearby Taliban positions that have made the airport unusable.
The opposition has said it would not march into Kabul if it gets that far, but would halt outside the city, where it is hated for the internecine battles for power in the early 1990s that killed about 50,000 residents.
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said Washington was not encouraging the Northern Alliance to take the capital.