= CONFUSION OVER THE BATTLE FOR KUNDZ*
= RED CROSS REPORTS ALLIANCE ATROCITIES IN MAZAR-I-SHARIF
= TALIBAN SAY WOULD NEVER SURRENDER KANDAHAR
= FACTIONAL BLOODLETTING HAD ALREADY BEGUN IN KABUL
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KABUL/MAZAR-I-SHARIF (Islamweb & News Agencies) - The Northern Alliance said it launched an assault to take the northern Afghan enclave of Kunduz by force on Thursday after the failure of talks on a Taliban surrender in the besieged province.Despite an announcement by a top Northern Alliance commander that surrender terms had been agreed, Alliance Interior Minister Yunus Qanuni said the deal had fallen through.
``We have tried to settle the issue of Kunduz through negotiation but we have been forced to choose a military solution,'' Qanuni told Reuters in an interview in Kabul.
``At the moment our forces are advancing. We hope by tomorrow we will have secured Kunduz.''
Thousands of Taliban fighters and Pakistanis, Arabs and Chechens linked to militant fugitive Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network are encircled in Kunduz, the Taliban's last redoubt in the north of Afghanistan.
Qanuni said 15,000 Taliban troops, including 9,000 to 10,000 foreigners, were in Kunduz city and its surroundings.
He said Taliban forces in the city never meant to lay down their arms: ``They had no intention of surrendering.''
FIGHTING FLARES
Alliance forces suspended the assault earlier this week to allow talks, but Reuters reporters saw Alliance fighters massed east of Kunduz firing rockets at Taliban positions on Thursday. Alliance commanders said they were also advancing from the west.
They also said U.S. bombing raids went on all day, the 47th day of attacks on the Taliban for harboring bin Laden.
Northern Alliance warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostum held surrender talks with Taliban commander Mullah Faizal in Mazar-i-Sharif, saying they had agreed to allow Afghan Taliban fighters safe passage and try foreign al Qaeda troops.
``I think they will surrender on Saturday and Sunday,'' Dostum said. About 200 Afghan Taliban decided not to wait, leaving Kunduz on Thursday in 15 vehicles to give themselves up, Reuters reporters at the front said.
The Northern Alliance says Afghan Taliban in the city have been ready to surrender for days, but their al Qaeda comrades, fearing they would get little mercy if they surrendered, were fighting to the death and executing would-be deserters.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said on Thursday that 400 to 600 bodies were found in Mazar-i-Sharif after its capture by the Northern Alliance.
A spokeswoman could not say whether the dead had been executed or killed in fighting before the town fell.
TALIBAN DEFIANT IN KANDAHAR
If Kunduz were to fall, the Taliban would be left in control only of Kandahar, home of their supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, and nearby southern provinces.
The Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press said U.S. planes bombed targets around Kandahar on Thursday. Anti-Taliban tribal leader Hamid Karzai told Reuters by satellite phone from central Afghanistan that the militia was on the defensive even around Kandahar.
``They have suffered heavily in the past few days from U.S. bombing and also ambushes by common people,'' Karzai said.
The reports could not be independently verified.
In the border town of Spin Boldak on Wednesday, Tayab Agha, spokesman for Mullah Omar, demanded an end to U.S. bombing and vowed the Taliban would never surrender in the south.
ETHNIC DIVISIONS
Fighting west of Kabul on Thursday stoked fears that factional bloodletting had already begun.
The fighting appeared to involve the mainly Tajik and Uzbek Northern Alliance, their Shi'ite allies, a hardline Sunni warlord and the Taliban. But, as is often the case in Afghanistan, it was unclear on which side each was fighting.
Tribal leaders in south Afghanistan, ethnic Pashtuns like most of the Taliban, warned the Northern Alliance not to march on Kandahar, the radical Taliban militia's spiritual home.
The capture of Kabul on November 13 by the Alliance, dominated by Tajiks and Uzbeks, has worried Pashtuns, the largest Afghan ethnic group.
They fear the Alliance might seek to cling to power rather than build an inclusive government that represents all of Afghanistan's ethnic groups and political factions.
Afghans remember the vicious 1990s civil war, in which mujahideen leaders now in the Northern Alliance turned on each other. Some 50,000 were killed in Kabul alone over five years.
Trying to avoid a rerun, the United Nations has persuaded rival factions to attend roundtable talks in a German castle on November 26, promising a voice to all ethnic groups, including the Pashtuns. But the Taliban will not be invited