BBC News Online: World: South Asia

Taleban fighters in Kunduz surrender

The Northern Alliance is confident of taking Kunduz

The BBC's Rupert Wingfield-Hayes, reporting from outside the city, says that 20 vehicles full of armed Taleban fighters came out of the city and surrendered.

He says they all appear to have been Afghan fighters. They did not include any of the several thousand foreign soldiers believed to be trapped inside Kunduz.

An earlier, unconfirmed report said that 600 foreign Taleban from Kunduz had given themelves in to Northern Alliance commanders in nearby Mazar-e-Sharif.

"This process of surrendering has started. This is the first group. This will be continuing," said Amanullah Khan, a northern alliance spokesman.

The foreign fighters, believed to be Pakistanis, Chechens and Arabs, had been brought to Mazar-e-Sharif on Friday night, he said.

Kunduz 'deal'

General Rashid Dostum, one of the main alliance commanders in northern Afghanistan, says the surrender of Taleban forces inside the city of Kunduz has been arranged for Sunday.

But there would be no safe passage for foreign Taleban fighters, who would be held in detention camps while they were investigated for links with Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, he said