'300 Taliban dead in bloodbath'

Hundreds of Taliban prisoners have been killed as they attempted to break out of a jail close to Mazar-i-Sharif.

In the uprising, American warplanes dropped three bombs on the compound as the prisoners threatened to overwhelm their guards.

Among the prisoners were Arabs, Chechens and Pakistanis, who had earlier surrendered at Kunduz, which is now in Northern Alliance hands. The prisoners had been taken to the 19th century mud fort of Qala-i-Jhangi 10 miles west of Mazar.

The revolt began when one of the prisoners pulled a grenade from his turban and threatened to blow up himself and a group of his guards. In the revolt the Taliban and al Qaeda prisoners seized machineguns and Kalashnikov assault rifles and fought the Northern Alliance guards for the best part of a day.

A US special forces unit, which included members of the SAS, was sent from Mazar to help quell the revolt, and they called in US Navy warplanes, which dropped the bombs at the souther n end of the for t. Blackhawk helicopters and even the lumbering Hercules AC-130 Spectre gunship had to be called in as the Taliban threatened to overwhelm their captors.

"There has been bombing and shooting all night long," said one witness who spent the night a few kilometres away.

There was really heavy firing all around. The Taliban were firing into the northern side of the fortress. The Northern Alliance soldiers were quite frightened but they were firing back."

There were several foreign journalists in the compound at the time, and a German television crew filmed sequences of Northern Alliance guards firing into crowds of prisoners.

"There were a lot of explosions at once," said Arnim Statuth, the ARD cameraman. "The Taliban very quickly took guns from the dead guards."

One US adviser was killed according to witnesses, though this has not been confirmed by the Pentagon. The Pentagon has said that at least 300 prisoners were involved in the fighting, though local aid workers say the number was nearer 500.

Zaha Wahadat, the spokesman for the Northern Alliance said later, "all the prisoners were killed".

The military spokesman at a Northern Alliance base in nearby Tajikistan, Abdul Vadud, said today that the situation in Mazar-i-Sharif was "under control".