The opposition are meeting strong Taleban resistance
The strategic northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif has had a bloody recent history.
As Taleban and Northern Alliance fighters battle for control of the city human rights organisations have called on the Afghan opposition not to take revenge on Taleban forces for atrocities committed when they took the city over three years ago.
Witnesses described the first day of the occupation of Mazar-e-Sharif as a "killing frenzy" as the Taleban "shot at anything that moved", killing hundreds of civilians.
The Taleban instigated a house-to-house search to round up male Hazaras, a Persian-speaking Shia Muslim minority, for summary execution, human rights organisations have reported.
Within days, the city's new governor, Mullah Manon Niazi, reportedly made speeches in Mazar-e Sharif's mosques describing Hazaras as "infidels" and calling them to convert to the Sunni Muslim faith or be killed.
Apart from the executions, men taken prisoner by the Taleban died of suffocation or heat exhaustion inside metal lorry containers.
Human Rights Watch (HRW), the US-based rights organisation, has added that farmers from the Sunni Muslim Pashtun community and nomads were allowed to take land around Mazar-e-Sharif that had belonged to the communities persecuted by the Taleban.
The massacre was widely seen as an act of revenge for the execution of up to 3,000 Taleban members just 15 months earlier after they were captured during a failed attack on the city.
The captured Taleban were killed in the streets or at remote sites, some thrown down wells.
Coveted city
Mazar-e-Sharif is one of Afghanistan's main cities and occupies a strategic position less than 100 kilometres from the Uzbek border.
Home to a mix of Uzbeks, Hazaras, Tajiks and Pashtuns, the city enjoyed a period of calm in the 1990s under the rule of anti-Taleban warlord General Rashid Dostum.
Iran even had a mission in the anti-Taleban city and when the Taleban seized it they killed nine Iranian diplomats, almost sparking war with Tehran.
They city's electricity plant still functions, as do two plants producing fertiliser and a textile factory.
It is looking increasingly vulnerable to recapture, as US forces weaken the Taleban defences with bombing.
HRW notes that no Afghan commander from either the Taleban or the opposition has yet faced trial on war crimes charges.
"This has fed the cycle of impunity and encouraged further such abuses," says the organisation.