KABUL - After a five-year blackout ordered by the Taliban, Kabul Television came back on air Sunday with a three-hour programme introduced by a 16-year-old Afghan girl.

Wearing a stylish brown and cream head scarf, Mariam Shakebar welcomed back the capital's viewers and outlined the evening's entertainment of a reading from the Koran followed by music, cartoons, interviews and news in Dari and Pashto.

Co-presenter Shamsuddin Hamid, in dark glasses and sporting a day-old stubble, thanked all those who had worked to bring the station back on air just six days after Taliban forces fled the capital and the Northern Alliance took control.

"Greetings, viewers, we hope you are all well!" he said. "We're glad to have destroyed terrorism and the Taliban and to be able to present this program to you."

Hamid promised that nothing would be censored on Kabul Television and the views of all Afghans would be aired.

Television was banned under the Taliban's hard-line Islamic regime, and women were forbidden from working. Shakebar, then an 11-year-old presenter of children's programmes, lost her job.

A few wealthy residents took the risk of watching foreign television channels via satellite dishes, but most people kept their sets hidden away in cupboards. Radio broadcasts fed them a daily diet of Islamic prayers, teachings and Taliban propaganda.

Engineers at the Afghan capital's television station, half-destroyed by war and empty since 1996, worked around the clock to bring Kabul TV back on air at 6 p.m.

The station's huge satellite dish was demolished by fighting between rival mujahideen factions in the early 1990s.

Afghan technicians instead hoisted an aging antenna on the roof of Kabul's Intercontinental Hotel, next to state-of-the-art equipment set up by foreign television networks broadcasting worldwide.

Nearby a small white satellite dish, riddled with bullet holes, had already resumed broadcasting radio programmes.

"When we lost television here, it was a terrible blow," Kabul TV Director Humayon Rawi said in the chaotic studio. "This is a big day for us. Our men and women are working together side by side."

Broadcasting with 30-year-old equipment through a 10-Watt transmitter, Kabul TV will be seen at first only for three hours a day in central Kabul. - Nampa-Reuters