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Pro-Taliban American Among Wounded Surviving POWs
QALAI JANGHI, Afghanistan, Dec.3 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Officials of the U.S.-led coalition said Monday that a young American citizen appeared to be among pro-Taliban survivors of the Qalai Janghi massacre, in which 150 Taliban prisoners of war were slaughtered last week, news agencies reported.
Coalition spokesman Kenton Keith said a man identifying himself as a U.S. citizen by the name of John Walker, had been delivered to U.S. custody, but his identity had not yet been confirmed, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
A 20-year-old U.S. citizen, identified as Abdul Hamid, born John Walker, was taken by the Northern Alliance after its troops and U.S. warplanes suppressed a rebellion in northern Afghanistan at the weekend,
Newsweek reported Sunday.
More than 80 survivors, mostly foreign Taliban volunteers believed to be loyal to Osama bin Laden, survived U.S. air raids and a three-day battle before surrendering at the weekend.
Hiding in a basement among burned corpses of their comrades, they survived Northern Alliance rockets and burning petrol fired into the basement before succumbing when the Alliance flooded their refuge with icy water, the British daily newspaper,
The Independent, reported.
After they surrendered, they were taken to a prison in Shabarghan, the main stronghold of Northern Alliance warlord General Rashid Dostum. The Northern Alliance leader gave orders that nobody would be allowed to see them without his permission.
The scenes at Qalai Janghi, after the POWs surrendered, were some of the most horrifying to have come out of Afghanistan since the U.S. bombing began.
The bodies of more than 150 Taliban fighters littered the ground. The Independent reported that the prisoners appeared to have been slaughtered after they had surrendered, and should have been given the protection of the Geneva Convention.
"That any of them survived at all was extraordinary," said The Independent's correspondent. "I was standing only a few meters away when an Afghan recovery worker trying to collect the bodies was shot dead by the survivors in the basement on Thursday. It was the first sign that any of them were still alive."
"No one thought as many as 80 could still be hiding there," he added. "The stench of rotting human flesh at the entrance to the basement made it almost impossible to breathe and U.S. bombs had reduced the buildings above to rubble."
The first 13 survivors emerged on Friday, followed by many more on Saturday. Some said they had wanted to surrender much earlier but were prevented from doing so by a group of other fighters.
Many of their faces were black - the result of General Dostum's troops reportedly pouring burning petrol into the basement to smoke them out - but they said they had been able to endure the fumes and the more than 20 large rockets the Northern Alliance fired into their hiding place.
By the time Dostum's men flooded them with freezing water they had also run out of ammunition. Many of the survivors had open wounds in their chests and legs.
They were treated at Shabarghan hospital. Doctors there said the prisoners were in sufficiently good health and could be transferred to the prison, but which seems unlikely given the severity of their wounds. There were unconfirmed rumors that one had died on his way to the prison. The head of the hospital, and individual named Dr. Harun, refused to speak to reporters, according to the paper.
Dostum's troops have told the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) they would grant the ICRC access to the prisoners after 24 hours. They said the time lapse was needed to ensure that Red Cross workers' safety could be guaranteed.
The few survivors interviewed after coming out of the basement confirmed they, and not Dostum's troops, started the killing at Qalai Janghi. They said they had been offered safe passage to Kandahar, the Taliban's last stronghold, if they surrendered. They started a revolt when they found this was not true.
The U.S. stated they were forced to bomb Qalai Janghi after the prisoners rebelled, seized rocket launchers and mortars and attacked their captors. A CIA agent in the compound was killed during the prison revolt.
Dostum's officials made it clear Sunday they were not happy with the way the massacre had been reported or with the media photographs of his troops prying the fillings from the mouths of dead men.
Meanwhile, there were reports Sunday that trenches were being dug near the ancient city of Balkh. About 2,000 foreign Taliban fighters, who fled when the city of Kunduz was captured, are still at large in northern Afghanistan and some have reportedly been seen in the Balkh area.
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