Posted on 11/25/2001 8:38:35 AM PST by Leroy S. Mort
Some U.S. special forces troops were in an Afghan fortress where Taliban prisoners of war rioted, a Pentagon spokesman said Sunday. All the Americans were believed to be safe, while hundreds of foreign fighters were reported killed.
The uprising started among about 300 ``hard-core Taliban'' prisoners who had smuggled weapons into the fort and tried to fight their way out, spokesman Lt. Col. Dan Stoneking said. U.S. aircraft bombed the Taliban forces during the fighting, he said.
``It appears all U.S. personnel are accounted for'' and believed to be safe, Stoneking said.
The fighters were captured a day earlier in the siege of the northern city of Kunduz. The riot took place outside the northern town of Mazar-e-Sharif, where they were being held, a northern alliance spokesman said.
A northern alliance commander who controlled the fort, Gen. Rashid Dostum, brought in about 500 of his fighters to quell the uprising, Stoneking said.
The fighters were not Afghans, but most were Chechens and Pakistanis, Stoneking said.
Foreign fighters in Kunduz - mainly Arabs, Chechens and Pakistanis - had insisted on security guarantees following reports of summary executions by the northern alliance in Mazar-e-Sharif and Kabul, the Afghan capital.
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