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Monday, November 19, 2001 - Web posted at 6:36:39 am GMT

KABUL - Afghanistan's Taliban held firm in their stronghold, Kandahar, on Sunday and mounted a bitter defence of their last redoubt in the north as their only envoy to the outside world said Osama bin Laden was no longer a guest.

The Taliban ambassador to Pakistan said the Saudi-born militant, accused of masterminding the Sept 11 hijack attacks on the United States, was not in Taliban-controlled areas of Afghanistan.

"I don't know whether he is in Afghanistan or not," Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef told reporters in Islamabad after returning from a visit to the southern city of Kandahar, the Taliban's spiritual home and still firmly in their hands.

But the Pentagon said it believed Bin Laden was still in Afghanistan.

In Kunduz, the last enclave held by the Taliban in north Afghanistan, the opposition said Pakistani, Arab and Chechen guerrillas supporting the Taliban were fighting to the death, executing Afghan comrades who wanted to surrender.

"We have heard that a group of local Taliban tried to surrender in Kunduz but they were killed by the foreign soldiers," a Northern Alliance Foreign Ministry spokesman told Reuters by telephone from neighbouring Taloqan city.

Six Arab fighters blew themselves up earlier this week rather than give in to advancing opposition forces, he said.
The opposition said US air strikes were battering Taliban positions. The reports could not be independently verified.

In Kandahar, the Taliban said they were still in control but announced they were extending a night curfew, as US planes pounded targets around the city with bombs.

The raids killed 46 people in and around Kandahar, home of Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) said, describing the raids on Saturday night and Sunday morning as some of the heaviest in 43 days of air strikes.

AIP said 138 people had been killed in the last 48 hours by US bombing of the Kandahar area and in the eastern province of Nangahar and the city of Khost in next-door Paktia.

There was no sign the beleaguered Taliban were ready to withdraw from the powerbase they captured seven years ago this month from the mujahideen despite reports on Friday that they had done a deal on a withdrawal that would leave the city in the hands of fellow members of the ethnic Pashtun majority.

The Taliban extended the curfew by an hour, warning residents they would be shot if they came out of their homes after 1530 GMT, witnesses arriving in Pakistan told Reuters.

The military advance of the Northern Alliance, which swept into Kabul on Tuesday just days after starting a major land offensive, has far outstripped political progress on agreeing a future government for Afghanistan.

The Alliance had told other factions and its foreign allies that it would not enter Kabul until the structure of a broad-based post-Taliban government had been agreed. But the Alliance now holds the capital, while a political deal is days or weeks away at best. - Nampa-Reuters

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