The Alliance representatives have rejected suggestions that peace-keepers enter the country because they have already

The Alliance representatives have rejected suggestions that peace-keepers enter the country because they have “already ensured security”.The opposition commander said his fighters travelled to Afghanistan from their base in the Pakistan border town of Quetta, accompanied by a colonel from Pakistan and supported by US air power. On the way, they stopped at the site of an old refugee camp to collect a large cache of weapons, including machine-guns, rocket launchers and bazookas, he said.Over the next few days, the group made its way through mountains and desert and crossed into Afghanistan where it captured a number of towns and villages. The force moved on Takteh Pol on 23 November, where fighting for the town lasted three hours “There were seven or eight Americans with us at Takteh Pol. They just filmed how we attacked, how we moved and how we went forward,” the opposition commander said “They did not fight. Those Taliban who surrendered were not killed, only those who fired on us were killed.”He said graves were dug and 10 to 12 bodies were buried in each of them.Yesterday the Pentagon said it was looking into the reports of the shooting.The New York-based Human Rights Watch said it seemed that the shootings represented a “serious war crime”..

Amid growing reports of war crimes and summary executions taking place in Afghanistan, leading charities and human rights organisations said yesterday that it was essential that the rights of prisoners of war were observed – regardless of who they were and where they were captured. Afghanistan ratified the code in 1956.Catherine Deman, an adviser to the legal division of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), said: “Article three applies to anybody – the Northern Alliance, the Taliban, al-Qa’ida, anybody fighting in the territory. It is the same in the Afghan mountains as it would be in Rwanda, Iraq or anywhere else. Article three is the minimum standard.”The call from the Red Cross came as the human rights group Amnesty International demanded an inquiry into the killings of hundreds of Taliban and al-Qa’ida prisoners after a prisoners’ uprising at Qalai Janghi fort, near Mazar-i-Sharif. Many of the dead were killed by US airstrikes directed by British and American special forces personnel.Amnesty said any investigation should examine the “proportionality of the response”. It added that the inquiry “should make urgent recommendations to ensure that other instances of surrender and holding of prisoners do not lead to similar disorders and loss of life”.Reporters were yesterday allowed in the fort for the first time, where they saw grisly scenes with scores of dead bodies rotting in the sun, many of them being stripped by Alliance fighters.

Article three states that aside from murder, cruelty and torture, “outrages” against personal dignity in the form of humiliating and degrading treatment, are banned.. US warplanes were catapulted off an aircraft carrier in the Arabian Gulf toward Afghanistan to hunt down al–Qaida and Taliban leaders. We want to go after the leadership, that’s where the center of gravity is,” USS Theodore Roosevelt Rear Adm. Mark Fitzgerald said, without disclosing specific targets.U.S. Navy F–14 Tomcats and the Marine Corps Hornets were leading Thursday’s airborne hunt for Osama bin Laden, his al–Qaida cohorts and leaders of Afghanistan’s crippled Taliban regime, including supreme leader Mullah Omar.With sights set on top officials from both groups, U.S. warplanes Tuesday bombed a compound near the Taliban’s spiritual center, Kandahar, believed used by senior Taliban or al–Qaida figures, the Pentagon said.

It was unclear if any were killed.The U.S.–led campaign, which was launched Oct. 7, has killed several lieutenants of bin Laden, the prime suspect in the Sept 11 attacks on the United States. Mohammed Atef, one of Saudi dissident bin Laden’s top two advisers, was killed in a CIA–assisted U.S airstrike around Nov 14. Atef was believed to have played roles in several attacks, including the airborne strikes on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.Two other leading al–Qaida figures – Egyptians Mohammed Salah and Tariq Anwar al–Sayyid Ahmad – are believed dead after U.S. bombing in early November near Khowst in eastern Afghanistan, officials said.U.S.