QANDAHAR ALSO FALL TO THE NORTHERN ALLIANCE
TEHRAN 13 Nov. (IPS) First elements of the Norther Alliance forces have reached Tuesday the outskirts of Qandahar, the residence citry of the Taleban supreme leader Mollah Mohammad Omar and his Saudi guest, Osama Ben Laden, sought by the Americans for the terrorist attacks on the United States on 11 September.
"Taleban are evacuating Qandahar, as the first units of the Northern Alliance are pointing their canons towards the city", one source with close links with the Alliance forces told an Iran Press Service correspondent in Tehran.
The news was confirmed by the British news agency Reuters that, quoting witnesses, said thousands of tribal fighters were advancing on the Taleban stronghold of Qandahar in southern Afghanistan after taking the nearby airport on Tuesday, witnesses said.
Travellers from the area arriving in the Pakistani border town of Chaman said they had seen 4,000 to 5,000 fighters capture the airport, some 30 km (20 miles south of Qandahar, earlier on Tuesday. They said they could threaten the city in the evening or on Wednesday morning.
The fall of Qandahar followed that of Kabol, the capital and Heart, further on the West, allowing the Alliance forces to become in full control of the entire Iran Afghan borders.
"It is a repeat of the 1996 when the Taleban rolled over the country, capturing city after city from the warring mujahedin forces who had reduced Kabol to shamble, almost without bloodshed, welcomed warmly by the inhabitants", one resident of Kabol said, adding this time "it is the reverse that is happenig, with Taleban on the run and the people, tired of five years of harsh, oppressive life imposed on them by the orthodox Muslim Taleban, are cheering the Northern Alliance forces as liberators".
The fighters were seen on the march at Shorandab Mountains, some 28 km (18 miles) from the city, travellers told Reuters.
Taleban's Pakistani supporters said Tuesday the hard-line Islamic movement will now fight a guerrilla war after withdrawing from Afghanistan's major cities to save the population from further U.S. bombing.
"We think a guerrilla war will be started now. I think this is the beginning of the war" Abdul Aziz Khan Khilji, a representative of radical Pakistani religious party Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam (JUI) said.
"They have shifted to the hills," Khilji told Reuters in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta. ENDS QANDAHAR CAPTURED 131101