The fall of Zari, Keshendeh and Aq-Kupruk districts, reported by commander Atta Mohammad’s force, took the Northern Alliance a step closer to the strategic northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif.
Atta’s spokesman, Mohammad Ashraf Nadeem, said the three districts had fallen in heavy fighting in which 200 Taliban were killed and 300 had surrendered.
The territory, 70 kilometres south of Mazar-i-Sharif, has swung backward and forwards between the two sides for several days, while US warplanes have carried out intense raids on Taliban lines.
Nadeem said that among those captured was the Taliban’s northern commander Mullah Qair. “He was injured and we’re holding him prisoner.”
There were celebrations at the Northern Alliance headquarters, Nadeem said, but the opposition is well aware that each attack is often quickly followed by a counter-offensive.
US warplanes pounded Taliban positions in northern and northeastern Afghanistan on the 31st day of their operation to force the Taliban to hand over Osama bin Laden.
According to anti-Taliban forces, they took complete control of Zari at dawn after an all-night battle.
Zari is just west of Aq-Kupruk and Keshendeh, where fighting had raged this week as the Northern Alliance tried to press toward Taliban-held Mazar-i-Sharif, the capital of Balkh province.
The northern provinces of Balkh and Samangan have shaped up as a crucial battlefield in the month-old US campaign. They border on Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, from where supplies and US troops could enter Afghanistan.
US warplanes struck Taliban front lines close to the Tajik border on Tuesday in their sixth attack in the region in the last 10 days.
But a month after the first airstrikes, the Taliban remained defiant in their refusal to hand over Osama.
“We are ready for a long war and we hope to defeat the United States, which the rest of the world calls a superpower,” Afghan Education Minister Amir Muttaqi said on Monday.
“The US should revise its wrong, terrorist policies, otherwise this war, which may last for decades, will burn many Americans and Afghans.”
The Northern Alliance, which controls about 10 per cent of Afghanistan, continued preparations for a threatened ground offensive on the shattered capital.
Still, the anti-Taliban alliance remains desperately short of fuel, cash and ammunition, and junior commanders said they were far from ready to launch a major offensive.
FOUR PLANES DOWNED: The Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) said on Tuesday that 633 civilians had been killed and four US planes destroyed since the start of the US airstrikes.
The Taliban have said more than 1,500 people have been killed since Oct 7.
The AIP said that on top of the deaths, collated from its own sources, between 800 and 1,000 people had been injured.
The agency said four US aircraft, including a spy plane which crashed near Samangan in the north, had been destroyed.
According to the AIP toll, 204 people have been killed in Kandahar.
This was followed by 163 deaths in Nangarhar province, east of Kabul, 92 in Kabul itself, 79 in Herat and 32 in the northern province of Balkh, where the Taliban are fighting off the Northern Alliance.
The other deaths were in the provinces of Parwan (22), Uruzgan (18), Kapisa (nine), Kunduz (five), Helmand (five), Paktika (two) and Farah (two).
EXPLOSION: A loud explosion rocked Kabul on Tuesday evening, minutes after residents reported hearing a helicopter flying over the city.
Residents said the explosion appeared to be inside the city perimeter.
“We could hear what sounded like a helicopter flying overhead, but there was no anti-aircraft fire from the Taliban,” one resident said.—AFP