November 14, 2001	Wednesday	Shaba’an 27, 1422

ISLAMABAD, Nov 13: The United Nations said on Tuesday that Northern Alliance forces had “apparently” killed more than 100 young Taliban recruits hiding in a school in Mazar-i-Sharif.

UN coordinator’s office spokeswomen Stephanie Bunker said the UN had received several reports from “corroborative sources” that the soldiers died after the Northern Alliance captured the city.

“Over 100 Taliban troops, who were mainly young recruits hiding in a school, were killed Saturday at 6pm,” Bunker said at a news conference.

She said the opposition alliance had “apparently” carried out the killings and that there was still fighting in Mazar-i-Sharif.

Some 200 Taliban troops were making a stand in a school, armed with light and heavy weapons, after the opposition captured Mazar-i-Sharif, a separate report said at the weekend.

Bunker also said there had been “minimal” looting of UN vehicles and equipment in Kabul in the early hours of the opposition’s takeover on Tuesday.

She added that Northern Alliance guards had been posted to UN offices in the city.

TALKS WITH ZAHIR: The brother of assassinated Afghan warlord Ahmed Shah Masood said on Tuesday he hoped Afghanistan’s former king Zahir Shah would send a delegation to Kabul for talks on the war-torn country’s political future.

“We hope the former king will soon send a delegation to Kabul to finalise the list for the council proposed to decide the political set-up for Afghanistan,” the Northern Alliance envoy in London, Ahmad Wali Masood, said.

“We had agreed with the former king that he would nominate 50 per cent of 120-member council from Pashtuns and the United Front would nominate the rest of 50 percent so that the council has representations from all nationalities and ethnicities,” Masood said.

Shah has been living in exile in Rome since 1973 and is seen by many members of the international community as a key player in any post-war political settlement.

He added that he hoped the military and political development within Afghanistan would go hand-in-hand towards setting up a government of national unity. Masood’s brother, guerrilla leader Ahmad Shah Masood, was blown up by two Arabs posing as television journalists at the beginning of September.

RABBANI: Ousted Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani intends to return soon to Kabul after his forces chased the Taliban from the capital, an Afghan envoy here said on Tuesday.

Rabbani, the political leader of the Northern Alliance, plans to return to Kabul in the next two or three days, said the ambassador for the Afghan government-in-exile in Dushanbe, Said Ibragim Khikmat.

Rabbani, who was deposed by the Taliban in 1996, is still recognized as Afghanistan’s president by the United Nations and most countries and his forces have been battling the Taliban militia.

Khikmat also said that a military and political committee has been created, headed by Rabbani’s military commander General Fahim, to ensure security in Kabul.—Reuers / AFP