Word: northerners
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...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...
...Soon after, about a dozen U.S. Special Forces and British Special Air Service troops arrived to coordinate Northern Alliance fire and U.S. air strikes to provide cover for those remaining inside the fort. Six of the Special Forces soldiers took up position in the northeast corner of the compound to act as spotters for the air strikes, while the rest exchanged fire with the Taliban from outside the compound. The remaining trapped American managed to escape over the dirt walls of the fort overnight, while the soldiers who had come to his assistance remained in position...
...inside the fort called in an air strike to pound the Taliban position shortly before 11a.m. - with disastrous results. Perry reports that a massive bomb, later identified by officials as a U.S. JDAM smart bomb, missed the Taliban position by around 600 feet, detonating barely 30 feet from the Northern alliance position and almost on top of the spotters who had called in the strike...
...bomb blasted dust and debris hundreds of meters into the air and created a hole in the fort's 60-feet high dirt walls "big enough to drive two or three tanks through," says Perry, who witnessed the attack. The explosion flipped over a Northern Alliance tank, trapping the two soldiers inside, and buried the Americans under rubble. According to eyewitnesses, two American soldiers were killed in the incident. Nik Mohammed, a 24-year-old Northern Alliance soldier, told Perry that he had helped carry one injured and two dead Americans out of the fort. The soldiers were identified...
...Outside the compound, the American retrieval mission quickly turned into one of rescue, as the 10th Mountain forces drove their seven light vehicles into the fort to evacuate the stricken U.S. and British troops. Northern Alliance commanders were spitting with rage. "Call it off!" shouted one general as Alliance soldiers streamed out of the fort. "Call it off! You've hit the wrong people!" Perry can confirm that at least three Afghan soldiers were killed and four injured by the stray bomb; one Northern Alliance commander put the numbers far higher, at 30 killed and 50 wounded...