ISLAMABAD, Nov 11: Some 200 Taliban fighters, armed with light and heavy weapons, are still putting up a fight in the opposition-held Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif, the Afghan Islamic Press reported on Sunday.

The agency said the group was holed up in a school on the south side and had kept forces of the opposition North Alliance at bay for two days.

The AIP gave no further details.

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld also spoke of continuing “pockets of resistance” in the city captured by the opposition on Friday in its first major victory of the five-week-old US-led offensive in Afghanistan.

“In some cases they are Taliban, in some cases they are al-Qaeda (the suspected terrorist network of Osama bin Laden),” Rumsfeld said on US television Sunday.

“In some cases they are people from other countries that have come to support the Taliban,” he said.

The US defence chief said the airport at Mazar-i-Sharif, potentially a key transit point for men and supplies from Uzbekistan to the north, had not been been fully secured by the opposition, “but it is close to being secured.”

The secretary added, however, that the opposition forces were aware of the risk of a counterattack.—AFP