Taliban Hold on In Kandahar & Kunduz

15/05/2001| IslamWeb

KABUL (Islamweb & News Agencies) - Afghanistan's Taliban clung onto their last two main strongholds Sunday in the face of withering U.S. bombing as their only diplomatic envoy said for the first time Osama bin Laden was no longer in territory under their control.The Taliban ambassador to Pakistan said the Saudi-born militant, accused of masterminding the September 11 attacks on the United States was not in Taliban-controlled areas of Afghanistan.
``I don't know whether he is in Afghanistan or not,'' Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef told reporters in Islamabad after returning from a visit to the southern city of Kandahar, the Taliban's spiritual home and still firmly in their hands.
Secretary of State Colin Powell said he believed bin Laden was still in Afghanistan but with less and less room to move. ''A lot of reports suggest that his freedom to maneuver has become quite limited,'' Powell said on U.S. television.
In Kunduz, the last enclave held by the Taliban in northern Afghanistan, the opposition said Pakistani, Arab and Chechen fighters supporting the Taliban were fighting to the death, executing Afghan comrades who wanted to give themselves up.
``We have heard that a group of local Taliban tried to surrender in Kunduz but they were killed by the foreign soldiers,'' a Northern Alliance Foreign Ministry spokesman told Reuters by telephone from the neighboring city of Taloqan.