The Red Cross is removing bodies of Taliban captives killed during an uprising in Mazar-e-Sharif. Journalists have been warned to stay away from parts of the fortress where the prisoners had been held.
The bodies of about 50 fighters whose hands were tied behind their backs with black scarves have been discovered. General Rashid Dostum, a senior Northern Alliance commander, says there could still be dangerous Taliban fighters alive among the corpses.
The human rights group Amnesty International called today for an inquiry into the killings. On Friday, a senior anti-Taliban commander in southern Afghanistan said his forces had executed 160 Taliban troops last week. US military officials witnessed the killings, which were carried out by machinegun, he added.
Red Cross workers today loaded corpses onto trailers attached to tractors. The vehicles could not make their way out of the fort until pine trees damaged in the fighting were cleared away from the road.
Northern Alliance fighters were cutting the scarves from the corpses with knives and scissors. At least one fighter pried gold fillings from a corpse. General Dostum denied his forces had tied the hands of the prisoners behind their backs.
"We did not tie them. We brought them here to be safer," Gen Dostum told reporters. "We behaved brotherly with them," Gen Dostum said. "We treated prisoners according to human rights." Gen Dostum warned journalists to stay away from the fort, saying there were "two dangerous people" still at large. They may be lying among the corpses. They are suicidal people and one can expect anything from them," he said. The circumstances of the revolt, however, remain unclear.
Shabudin, a Northern Alliance fighter, said his comrades had been tying the hands of some Taliban fighters who were believed to be Arabs. Shabudin said some Taliban fighters grabbed guns and began shooting.
Earlier it was reported Northern Alliance troops today took back full control of a fortress where hundreds of captured al Qaeda fighters loyal to Osama bin Laden died in a bloody revolt put down by US bombing and fierce ground attacks.
Television footage showed the bodies of al Qaeda fighters sprawled in trenches and littering the courtyards of the massive baked-mud Qala-i-Jhangi fortress after the revolt.
A Northern Alliance commander said probably all 600 prisoners, including Pakistanis, Arabs and Chechens, and more than 40 alliance fighters were killed in the fighting.
"We are sorry that so many people did die in Mazar-iSharif," Mr Kenton Keith, a spokesman for the US-led coalition fighting the Taliban said. But he told a news conference in Islamabad that the bombing of the fortress was not a massacre... not a reprisal.
A least one CIA operative is known to have died in the battle while five US soldiers were injured by a stray American bomb during the battle.
The uprising began on Sunday when al Qaeda fighters who had surrendered after defending the nearby city of Kunduz seized Kalashnikov assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers from their captors.
"What happened in Mazar-i-Sharif was a pitched battle...," Mr Keith said.