Word: fortress
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Even as medical workers picking through carnage Thursday came under fire from two surviving holdouts, prominent humanitarian organizations raised concerns over the confrontation in which 400 or more Taliban prisoners held at the Qalai Janghi fortress near Mazar-i-Sharif were killed in a three-day onslaught of Northern Alliance artillery and machinegun fire and U.S. air strikes. United Nations Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson on Thursday added her voice to calls by Amnesty International for an urgent international inquiry into the bloodbath, while the International Committee of the Red Cross questioned whether the rules of war had been properly...
...death? That claim itself is worthy of examination, a Red Cross official suggested to a British newspaper: "How many of the prisoners were armed and how many had a real combat role?" he said. "If 700 prisoners were heavily armed then it may be argued that the fortress became a legitimate combat target. But nobody knows the answers to these questions...
...Qalai Janghi prisoners were foreign Taliban volunteers who surrendered with the Taliban at Kunduz, and had then been separated from their Afghan comrades and brought to General Dostum's fortress. The Northern Alliance had promised amnesty for Afghan Taliban fighters; the foreigners were a problem. The U.S. had made clear during the siege of Kunduz that it would not accept any outcome that allowed Al Qaeda operatives to escape to other countries - they should, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld said bluntly, "either be killed or taken prisoner." Dostum had taken the captives to his fortress, announcing that he would hand them over...
...approximately 800 foreign Taliban volunteers taken to the Kala-i-Jangi fortress were eventually killed in three days of air strikes and ground attacks by U.S. and British special forces and Northern Alliance troops. But in the close-quarters battle, one air strike on Monday turned into a friendly-fire incident, and eyewitnesses told Perry that two American soldiers died in the explosion. U.S. officials assert, however, that no U.S. troops were killed by that misguided bomb; Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said in Washington Monday that five soldiers had been wounded but that none of their injuries was life-threatening...
...prisoners at Kala-i-Jangi were primarily foreign Taliban volunteers who had surrendered Saturday to the forces of Northern Alliance commander General Rashid Dostum. They had been taken to the fortress outside Mazar-i-Sharif for questioning to determine whether they had links with Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network. On Sunday, the Taliban prisoners overpowered their guards and seized weapons from the fort's armory, taking over the southwest corner and exchanging fire with Northern Alliance soldiers both inside and outside the compound. Two Americans were trapped inside; one of them, CIA officer Spann, was quickly killed, witnesses...