KABUL, Nov 11: Opposition forces spread their control throughout northern Afghanistan on Sunday and refused to rule out a drive on the capital Kabul after claiming to have decimated the Taliban militia’s main force.

Troops of the Northern Alliance, bursting out from the newly won city of Mazar-i-Sharif, drove south, west and northeast to press their advantage in the five-week-old US-led military offensive to topple the Taliban.

Northern Alliance leader Abdullah Abdullah said the Taliban had paid a heavy price for not withdrawing from northern Afghanistan sooner as the opposition, backed by US warplanes, rolled up territory in recent days.

“The importance of this big defeat is not just that they lost large areas, but they also lost their main fighting force,” Abdullah told reporters in the town of Jabul Seraj north of Kabul.

He estimated the Taliban had 15,000 troops, mostly foreigners and fighters from southern Afghanistan, in the north before the resistance forces began their push five days ago.

Abdullah said that “hundreds” of militia troops, mainly Pakistanis, were killed in Mazar-i-Sharif before the Taliban abandoned the city. Elsewhere, Taliban soldiers scattered into the perilous mountains, he said.

In the latest gains, Abdullah said opposition fighters had captured the central city of Bamiyan and Taloqan, capital of northeastern Takhar province, and were moving towards the province of Kunduz bordering Tajikistan.

A simultaneous drive westward captured Qala-i-Nau, the provincial capital of Badghis province, and the city of Herat near the border with Iran was expected to fall in the coming days, an opposition spokesman said.

The spokesman said 15 Taliban fighters had been killed, 300 taken prisonerc and hundreds more had defected during the fighting in Badghis. “Taliban morale was very low,” he added.

Abdullah did not rule out an offensive on Kabul, despite strong US appeals to leave the Afghan capital alone until an interim administration could be put in place.

Abdullah said the opposition understood US concerns but attributed fears that Kabul’s Pakhtoon population would react badly to the Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara-dominated Northern Alliance.

“We don’t want to see the policy of the United States towards Afghanistan shaped by ideas coming from Pakistan,” he said. “That is not understandable for us.”

The Northern Alliance has reinforced frontline positions 50 kms from Kabul and fresh US air strikes were launched against the city and Taliban positions to the north on Sunday.

The Taliban have confirmed the loss of five northern provinces after what they termed a “strategic withdrawal” aimed at avoiding casualties and consolidating their forces.

“Our forces are regrouping,” a spokesman was quoted as saying by the Afghan Islamic Press (AIP). “There is nothing to worry about. We left these places as part of our strategy.”

AIP said some 200 Taliban armed with light and heavy weapons were resisting the opposition in Mazar-i-Sharif from a school in the city’s south.

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld also spoke of “pockets of resistance” there.—AFP