Taliban Militia

Leaders of Afghanistan's Islamic regime raised the possibility Friday of talks with the opposition. In a radio broadcast, the ruling Taliban militia offered to begin negotiations with two of the opposition factions and allow a third faction to join in the talks if it frees its Taliban prisoners. That faction, led by ethnic Uzbek warlord Malik Pahlawan, has refused to hand over its estimated 2,000 prisoners.

Eight U.S. troops and an American contractor were killed early Wednesday when a veteran Afghan military pilot fired on trainers during a meeting in a military compound near Kabul International Airport. The Taliban claimed responsibility in what it said was the latest attack by an insurgent infiltrator. The pilot opened fire about 10 a.m. after an argument with a foreign colleague at a meeting in the operations room of the Afghan air force building, according to statements released by NATO and Afghan officials.

The northern alliance in this nation claimed to have pushed its extremist Islamic opponents out of the north's biggest city Sunday, a day after the Taliban militia claimed to have captured it. The city of Mazar-i-Sharif was the latest prize to fall to the Taliban militia in a series of spectacular victories in Afghanistan's civil war. Iran accused the Taliban of capturing 11 of its diplomats there and demanded their release. The Taliban said Mazar-i-Sharif was calm Sunday.

More than 400 inmates, many of them Islamic insurgents, escaped overnight from the main prison in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, the spiritual home of the Taliban movement, according to NATO officials. The inmates escaped through a nearly 400-yard tunnel they had spent six months digging, Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi said. The escape at the prison, which holds 1,200 inmates, began after dark and finished just before daybreak, said British Maj. Tim James, a spokesman for NATO forces in Kabul.

The Taliban militia on Saturday freed five Iranians in a goodwill gesture to ease tense relations between the two neighbors and asked Tehran to free Taliban fighters from Iranian jails. Taliban spokesman Maluvi Abdullahi Mutmain said the five were among "military" drivers captured when the militia seized the northern town of Mazar-i-Sharif from opposition factions last month. "They were freed this afternoon as a sign of our willingness to improve relations with Tehran," Mutmain said.

U.N. international employees began returning to Afghanistan after the ruling Taliban militia guaranteed they would not face a violent backlash because of newly proposed sanctions. Three U.N. workers arrived in the beleaguered capital, Kabul, while seven others returned to Herat and Kandahar, said Erick de Mul, the U.N. coordinator for Afghanistan.

Rockets landed near an airport on the outskirts of the capital, witnesses said, as fighting between the ruling Taliban militia and troops from the deposed government again threatened war-destroyed Kabul. The Taliban retaliated for the airport assault with several blistering air raids on government troops dug in around the strategic military base at Bagram, about 30 miles north of the capital.

A hard-line cleric who went to Afghanistan along with thousands of tribesmen to fight the United States was arrested with 30 companions as they returned home to Pakistan, police said. Maulana Sufi Mohammed led more than 10,000 armed tribesmen to Afghanistan last month to help the Taliban regime. However, more than half his followers fled to Pakistan after the rapid collapse of the Taliban militia.

Afghanistan's Islamic Taliban militia came up against the forces of a powerful warlord Monday after sweeping northward in relentless pursuit of former government troops. The rebel forces claimed victory over key northern towns and a province and said they had entered the strategic Panjsher valley, where they had bottled up former Defense Minister Ahmed Shah Masoud after a two-pronged advance overnight from Kabul.

Iran's foreign minister rejected a U.S. proposal to include members of the hard-line Taliban militia in any future Afghan government, saying Friday that the idea was "unacceptable." Russia and India, two allies of the United States in the fight against terrorism, also added their voices in opposition to letting Taliban "moderates" into a broad-based coalition being considered to rule Afghanistan if the Taliban regime collapses under U.S.-led bombardment. Secretary of State Colin L.

A suicide bomber killed at least 33 people at an army recruitment center in northern Afghanistan on Monday, underscoring the vulnerability of Afghan security forces as they struggle to assume more responsibility for safeguarding the country from Taliban insurgents. The Taliban took responsibility for the attack, the insurgency's second strike on an army recruitment center in the city of Kunduz in 12 weeks. A suicide bombing at a different recruitment center Dec. 19 killed nine Afghan soldiers and police officers and injured a dozen other people.

A suicide bombing killed at least 34 people and injured more than 40 at a funeral held by an anti-Taliban tribal militia Wednesday in northwest Pakistan, prompting militia leaders to angrily rebuke the government for failing to provide enough support for their battle against insurgents. The attack occurred in the village of Adezai, about 15 miles south of the city of Peshawar and just east of the volatile tribal areas where Al Qaeda and Taliban militants maintain strongholds. A teenage boy appeared at the funeral and was thought to be a mourner, witnesses and local police said.

Taliban insurgents killed six members of the American-dominated international military force in southern Afghanistan in a single attack Sunday, Western officials announced. A news release from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's International Security Assistance Force headquarters in Kabul, the Afghan capital, gave no further details about the attack, or the nationalities of the service members killed. The New York Times, which has a reporter and photographer traveling with American forces in southern Afghanistan, reported that all six soldiers killed were U.S. troops at a remote outpost near the town of Zhari, in Kandahar province.

A pair of suicide bombers attacked a large gathering of anti-Taliban elders inside a government compound in northwestern Pakistan on Monday, killing at least 41 people in one of the worst terrorist strikes in the volatile tribal belt this year. The attack occurred in the town of Ghalanai at the administrative headquarters of Mohmand, a region along the Afghan border that continues to see periodic clashes between Taliban militants and Pakistani troops. A meeting was underway at the compound between leaders of a local anti-Taliban militia and a top Mohmand official, authorities said.

The pro-Western governor of a key northern Afghanistan province and at least 18 other people were killed Friday in a massive explosion as they prayed in a crowded mosque, officials said. Mohammed Omar, the governor of Kunduz province, had warned of the dangers of the growing influence of the Taliban and other insurgent groups in Afghanistan's north. His death was the latest in a string of deadly assaults on government officials, including the assassination last week of a deputy governor in Ghazni province.

Taliban fighters gunned down a 10-member international medical team, including six Americans, in the wilds of northern Afghanistan, the aid group and local officials said Saturday, in an ambush that highlighted the growing dangers faced by foreign charity organizations in the country. The aid workers, who also included two Afghans, a German and a Briton, were attacked Thursday in a remote forested area of Badakhshan province as they were returning from a mission to provide eye care to rural villagers, according to provincial police and the International Assistance Mission, the Kabul-based group that organized the trip.

The woes of the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban militia ruling most of Afghanistan deepened Thursday as their foes signed a military alliance against them. Already suffering the worst military reverses in their two-year existence, the Taliban were hit by an alliance among Uzbek chief Abdul Rashid Dostum, ousted government military head Ahmed Shah Masoud and Karim Khalili of the Shiite Muslim Hezb-i-Wahdat faction.

Former Afghan government military chief Ahmed Shah Masoud has rolled back the Taliban militia that drove him from Kabul two weeks ago, taking two towns and possibly further territory, reliable sources said Sunday. They said Jabal os Saraj, the Taliban front-line headquarters town at the mouth of the Salang Pass through the Hindu Kush mountains and a two-hour drive from Kabul, fell Saturday.

Despite a wealth of detail in leaked U.S. documents about suspected collusion between Pakistani intelligence agents and the Afghan Taliban, experts here say the U.S. and Afghanistan have little choice but to work with a partner they believe supports, funds and equips their enemy. Pakistan vehemently denies assisting the Taliban, an assertion officials repeated after documents posted by the website WikiLeaks detailed reports of numerous meetings and contacts between intelligence agents and Afghan militants.