By Kabul correspondent William Reeve

A human rights organisation says 2,000 civilians were killed by Taleban forces when they captured the northern Afghan town of Mazar-i-Sharif, in August.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch called the massacre one of the worst atrocities of Afghanistan's 20-year civil war.

It called for an international investigation of the killings.

Human Rights Watch bases its findings on eyewitness accounts of survivors who fled to Pakistan.

They spoke of a killing frenzy in which Taleban soldiers shot anything that moved.

Three terrible days

The north Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif is peaceful and calm now, with the markets open and people getting on with their daily lives, but at the beginning of August this year there was three days that most ordinary civilians would not wish to live through again.

On the first day, the Taleban seized the city, which was mainly held by an opposition group known as Hezb-e-Wahdat, who are predominantly ethnic Hazaras and Shia Muslims.

As with all such military operations within urban areas, civilians undoubtedly suffered in the cross-fire in the heat of battle.

On the second day the Taleban searched houses for opposition fighters and weapons. Gunfire could be heard all around the city.

On the third day, more searches continued. By the fourth, the city was quietening down.

It will be impossible ever to know how many people lost their lives. Human Rights Watch is correct in saying there should be an investigation and in saying that civilians, especially Hazaras, suffered.

Victims of the long civil war

Few Hazaras could be seen on the streets of Mazar-i-Sharif today. But the whole tragedy of Afghanistan's civil war is that it is civilians who have suffered the most all along.

In the fighting within Kabul, before the Taleban had even appeared on the scene, about one-in-six of the civilian population were killed or injured in one year alone in indiscriminate fire from one side or another.

Half the city lost their homes, looting and rape was a daily fate for many. People disappeared without trace.

Human rights abuses were rife; there was little or no law and order. The outside world stood by and watched, saying nothing.

Taleban suffered too

Further more, if there is to be an investigation into the events in Mazar in August, the investigation should probe the events in the same city in May last year.

This was when the Taleban tried to capture it for the first time and held it very briefly.

However the opposition forces gained the upper hand, killing large numbers of Taleban fighters. But the human rights abuse that has not been properly investigated to this day was the execution of an estimated 2,000 Taleban prisoners by the opposition forces in very unsavoury ways.

The more recent events in Mazar were a direct corollary.