December 12, 2001	Wednesday	Ramazan 26, 1422

KABUL, Dec 11: About 1,000 bodies, the victims of fighting between Taliban and opposition forces, are believed to be lying around Kandahar airport, humanitarian sources in Kabul said on Tuesday, citing witnesses.

“The fighting was very fierce and lasted for a long time. We believe that this figure of a thousand dead is not unrealistic,” one of the sources said.

Kandahar, the Taliban’s last bastion which surrendered to Pakhtoon tribal forces on Friday, has several airports including a civilian one where the bodies are reportedly lying, and a military airbase.

The last few weeks, according to various reports, saw continuous clashes for control of the civilian airport situated between the Taliban’s final stronghold and the opposition forces.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), said it expected to begin burying the dead in the city of Kandahar itself, which was under relentless US bombardment for two months.

Taking advantage of the relative calm in the city, the ICRC dug some 100 graves, an ICRC official said.

The location of the burial site was chosen in consultation with the new governor of the city, Gul Agha, and military commander Mullah Naqibullah, the official said.

TALIBAN HOLED UP IN HOSPITAL: Diehard Taliban and fighters of Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network were holed up in a hospital in Kandahar on Tuesday and were refusing to surrender, a tribal commander said.

“There are civilian patients inside the hospital,” said the commander for the city’s new governor, Gul Agha.

He said Hafiz Majid, a top aide to Taliban supreme leader Mulla Omar, was leading an unknown number of fighters barricaded in the city’s Chinese Hospital.

He also said there were Taliban fighters at Sperwan, a village about 35kms west of Kandahar.

“Even if (Majid) surrenders, he won’t be forgiven. Somebody will kill him,” the commander said.—Reuters

KARZAI’S WARNING TO US: Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan’s interim leader starting Dec 22, warned the United States never to neglect Afghanistan and promised to root out terrorism in his country, in an interview on Tuesday with The Washington Post.

“We must finish them all, completely burn them out,” Karzai told the daily from the former residence of ousted Taliban leader Mohammad Omar, in Kandahar, where he set up his new headquarters.

Karzai also vowed to capture Omar and put him on trial.

“Omar has committed crimes, he’s killed thousands of people, he’s destroyed vineyards, he’s butchered my country, he’s brought terrorists here ... I want him tried,” Karzai said.

He also pledged to take all weapons out of circulation in Afghanistan.

“The gun has to stop ruling the country,” Karzai stressed.

Karzai said he wrote a letter to US President George W. Bush thanking him “for his help and for liberating us from a horrible force ... and then I reassured him that we would very, very earnestly work to destroy terrorism in Afghanistan.”

Karzai said Afghanistan would avoid past mistakes and spare its people of more suffering.

“Two things are very different from the past,” he said. “One, Afghans have suffered. We saw Afghans butchered by the Taliban and saw how the Taliban became terrorists as well. We won’t repeat those mistakes.

“Second, the international community recognizes that Afghanistan needs to be rebuilt. There is a stark recognition that Afghanistan must return to better times.” He also warned the United States not to repeat the mistake it made in the 1980s after helping to defeat the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. “Things went wrong in Afghanistan because the United States walked away,” he said. “So don’t walk away again.”—Reuters / AFP