Afghan opposition forces laid claim to the captured town of Kunduz today, beating captured Taliban in the streets and shooting wounded prisoners in the town's marketplace. The opposition reported scores of Taliban dead.
Shot Taliban lay dying on the streets, ringed by staring crowds. Alliance security official Mr Rahman Ali estimated 100 Taliban dead in the street, with perhaps 10 dead on the alliance side.
Frightened members of the city's Tajik minority began venturing back out onto city streets, liberated from what they saw as five years of oppressive Taliban rule.
"We are free," said Mr Taj Mohammed, a grey-bearded old man in the flowing green robes of ethnic Tajik men, pressing his hands to his heart.
Despite an North Alliance claim last night to have captured the city - the last northern stronghold of the Taliban - fierce firefights broke out when the main contingent of opposition forces pushed into Kunduz at daybreak.
Taliban forces were waiting, ambushing the arriving soldiers with rifle fire and rocket-propelled grenades. But Taliban came out the worst in the exchange.
Afghan Taliban and a hard core of allied foreign Islamic militia had held off opposition alliance forces at Kunduz for two weeks.
An estimated 3,000 Arabs, Pakistanis, Chechens and other foreigners resisted surrender of the city, fearing the northern alliance would single them out for killing.
Alim Razim, an adviser to alliance commander Rashid Dostum, said 5,000 Taliban surrendered as alliance forces moved into the city.
Most were locals and were released, but the alliance imprisoned 750 men they suspected of being foreigners, he said in Mazar-e-Sharif, Dostum's base to the west of Kunduz.
Ali and alliance General Daoud Khan both said a group of Arab fighters loyal to Osama bin Laden broke out and fled to nearby Chardara, just west of Kunduz. Ali said the fighters were pinned down by Monday afternoon with nowhere to run.
Under the surrender agreement worked out during the siege, Afghan Taliban fighters are to receive amnesty while foreigners, mostly Chechens, Arabs and Pakistanis loyal to bin Laden, are to be imprisoned and tried.
But treatment meted out even to captured Afghan Taliban - who can expect gentler treatment than the foreign Taliban can - appeared far harsher Monday than the deal provided for.
AP