Northern Alliance,Front line closing in on Kunduz
The Northern Alliance has resumed its offensive against the remaining Taliban fighters inside the city of Kunduz in northern Afghanistan.
However, there is continuing confusion about the situation in the city where many of the foreign Taliban have said that they will fight to the death.
Earlier a number of truckloads of Taliban soldiers crossed over to the Northern Alliance. However, the Alliance's interior minister has said that negotiations with the remaining Taliban forces had failed.
On the political front, the British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has arrived in Islamabad for talks with top UN and Pakistani officials on the formation of a broad-based government in Afghanistan.
He held immediate talks with UN special envoy to Afghanistan Francesc Vendrell, and is to meet tomorrow with his Pakistani counterpart and the country's military ruler, President Pervez Musharraf.
There were reports from Kunduz earlier that some Taliban fighters surrendered. Some television pictures showed fighters laying down their weapons.
Meanwhile, new fighting broke out near the capital, Kabul, where the Northern Alliance is trying to dislodge up to 700 Taliban fighters.
It was reported last night that all Taliban forces in Kunduz both native and foreign, had agreed to surrender. Northern Alliance commander Abdul Rashid Dostum, speaking after negotiations in nearby Mazar-i-Sharif, said that the Kunduz problem would be solved "without a fight".
Meanwhile, the Red Cross has contacted the United States and Afghanistan's Northern Alliance about Taliban fighters defending Kunduz. Red Cross staff discovered up to 600 bodies in Mazar-I-Sharif after it was abandoned by the Taliban.
However, a senior official said that they cannot yet confirm how they died. Speaking to reporters Olivier Durr said: "We cannot say these people had been brutally executed or were the result of fighting".
