Afghanistan Revolts

A blistering battle north of this war-battered Afghan capital on Saturday left as many as 30 civilians dead and scores of fighters injured and forced hundreds of people to flee their homes. Opposition soldiers said 30 civilians were killed by Taliban jet fighters that pounded enemy territory in Parwan and Kapisa provinces, both north of Kabul. Because of the fighting and the remoteness of the area, it was impossible to confirm the report independently. "The bombardment was heavy.

Officials with the Taliban religious army, which rules 85% of the country including Kabul, the capital, accused the opposition of launching a major offensive in Kunduz province in the north. The Taliban said it had repulsed its opponents and inflicted heavy casualties. The report could not be independently confirmed. U.N.-sponsored peace talks in Pakistan failed Sunday night.

Foreign aid workers left Kabul, the capital, in a convoy of vans and four-wheel-drive vehicles after the country's Taliban rulers ordered them to move to abandoned dormitories or leave the country. The convoy of about 200 aid workers wound its way through Kabul toward the eastern city of Jalalabad, headed for neighboring Pakistan. All the aid workers had left Kabul by evening. The exodus could have a devastating effect on the estimated 750,000 residents of Kabul.

The fundamentalist Islamic Taliban militia recaptured two strategic towns north of the capital, Kabul, in a major offensive, Taliban officials and a local news service reported. But the militia continued to face shelling from opposition forces still occupying hills near the towns of Golbahar and Jabal os Saraj, a Pakistan-based Afghan news service said.

Opposition forces were closing in on a force of the fundamentalist Taliban religious army stranded in the northern town of Pul-i-Khumri, Taliban fighters said. They said the Taliban had retreated on front lines north and south of the town, about 100 miles north of the capital, Kabul. Meanwhile, a Taliban statement issued in Kabul gave Iran 48 hours to close its embassy and evacuate its nationals. The Taliban has accused Iran of supporting an alliance of forces loyal to the deposed government.

The used Datsun pickup truck was purchased for $13,700 from its unsuspecting owner in the border town of Peshawar and packed with a huge quantity of explosives--the equivalent of 500 pounds of TNT. On a Sunday morning in November, a normal working day in this overwhelmingly Muslim country, the vehicle was piloted by a suicide driver through the gate of the Egyptian Embassy in Islamabad and detonated with devastating effect. The concussion stripped the bark from trees across the street.

Refugees fleeing fighting north of Kabul said Sunday that at least 40 civilians were killed or wounded in an artillery exchange between the Taliban and its enemies. The battle raged along a front line 12 miles north of the Afghan capital. Residents of two villages controlled by an anti-Taliban alliance fled to nearby Kalakan during a lull in the shelling. They said at least 40 civilians had been killed or wounded in the past few days and that most of the villages were abandoned.

The rebel Taleban Islamic militia fired 14 rockets at the Afghan capital, Kabul, killing three children and wounding 18 other people, the official Kabul Radio said. There was no independent confirmation of the report by the radio, whose accounts of factional fighting are often contested by opposition groups seeking to overthrow President Burhanuddin Rabbani.

A Taliban leader said restrictions on women that have prompted international condemnation could be lifted once the Islamic group has consolidated its hold over Kabul, the Afghan capital. The Taliban militia seized Kabul on Sept. 27, ousting the government in a campaign to install strict Islamic rule. The militia closed girls' schools and banned women from working. But the pledges to ease restrictions contrast with the Taliban's record elsewhere.

While Taliban negotiators talked with Afghanistan's northern warlord, Taliban fighters waged a blistering counterattack against the deposed government's troops outside the capital, Kabul. The Taliban claimed to have pushed the troops out of rocket range of the military base at Bagram, 30 miles north of the capital. The report could not be confirmed. Taliban forces also rejected an offer issued by ousted Deputy Foreign Minister Abdur Rahim Ghafourzai, who told the U.N.