BBC News Online: World: South Asia

Foreign fighters set for last stand

The Northern Alliance is likely to show little mercy to foreigners

And it has made it clear that Arab and Pakistani soldiers in the Taleban force can expect little mercy.

"For the foreign terrorists... there will be no negotiations, we will not deal with them, they are killers," said the local Alliance commander, General Daoud.

American planes have been bombing Kunduz, the only town in northern Afghanistan still under Taleban control.

Click here for map of the battlegrounds

Reuters news agency quotes local people as saying the US bombing of the city is having a deadly effect.

"On one hill there were a lot of Taleban. After the US bombs hit, there was nothing living there," refugee Jaglan Mohammed Sakhay told Reuters.

American officials estimate there are up to 3,000 Taleban in Kunduz.

They include "some of the more hardcore people", the American commander of the Afghan campaign, General Tommy Franks, said on Thursday.

The Northern Alliance says the true figure is ten times higher.

"There are 20,000 Taleban in Kunduz, many of them Arabs, and they are trying to break out.

"They are desperate, they have seen what happens to Arabs when the Northern Alliance gets hold of them," a Northern Alliance official said.

General Daoud says he is trying to get Taleban soldiers in Kunduz who are low ranking and also Afghans to surrender.

The Northern Alliance has been accused of massacring foreign troops as they swept across northern Afghanistan this week.

The United Nations spoke of a mass execution in the conquered city of Mazar-e-Sharif by the Northern Alliance. The International Committee of the Red Cross reported "hundreds" of deaths in the city, though it did not specify how many, if any, were victims of executions.

The Northern Alliance denied that there had been any massacre of Taleban troops.

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