Taliban military reportedly fleeing the capital

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Taliban military forces appeared to have deserted the capital of Kabul at dawn Tuesday, after a series of stunning military victories by opposition forces over the past four days, witnesses said. \nSporadic small arms fire from hills overlooking the city could be heard but the streets were empty of the Taliban soldiers, who had been there hours earlier. \nFrom the rooftop of the Intercontinental Hotel on a hill overlooking the city columns of Taliban vehicles could be seen heading south beginning at Monday night. The exodus continued after sun rise. \nNorthern alliance forces began moving into the city in pickup trucks loaded with soldiers armed with rifles and rocket launchers but there was no shooting. \nThe opposition had broken through Taliban front lines Monday and taken the hills above Kabul after a string of victories that started Friday with the taking of Mazar-e-Sharif. \nBefore abandoning the capital, the Islamic militia circled the mile-high city with tanks to defend against an all-out assault. \nShouting "God is great," anti-Taliban troops had rolled within 12 miles of Kabul Monday on trucks carrying the green, white and black Afghan flag and displaying pictures of their slain commander, Ahmed Shah Massood.\nThe anti-Taliban forces, a coalition of factions and ethnic groups, capped their four-day dash across the north by overruning western Afghanistan's biggest city, Herat. Commanders said they were pushing toward Kunduz, the last Taliban-held city in the north. \nHaron Amin, a Washington-based envoy for the northern alliance, said Monday that the anti-Taliban forces would surround Kabul, which sits in the foothills of the Hindu Kush mountains, to prevent the Taliban from reinforcing or resupplying their troops inside. \n"We have no intention of going into Kabul," Amin said. The United Nations must first come up with a plan for dividing power in Afghanistan after the Taliban falls, he said. \nAt the United Nations, the United States, Russia and six nations that border Afghanistan pledged "to establish a broad-based Afghan administration on an urgent basis."\nThe aim is to put together a transitional leadership that is broadly acceptable, possibly including Taliban defectors. The United Nations might take interim control of the capital, and Muslim and non-Muslim nations are likely to join with Turkey in providing peacekeepers, U.S. officials said. \nLikely participants with Turkey in a combined peacekeeping force from Muslim and non-Muslim countries include Indonesia, Bangladesh and Jordan, U.S. officials said. \nIn a television interview, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, whose government was once a strong supporter of the Taliban, said a broad-based transitional government was essential. \n"Some progress being made by Northern Alliance towards Kabul is dangerous to an extent, dangerous because we are now getting information that there are certain atrocities being perpetrated in Mazar-e Sharif. And that is exactly my apprehension that we have seen a lot of atrocities, a lot of killings between the various ethnic groups in Kabul after the Soviets left, and that's why we are of the opinion that Kabul should be maintained as a de-militarized city. That is very important," Musharraf said on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. \nThe Taliban losses followed an intensive bombing campaign by the United States, and some of the militia's commanders switched sides once the opposition forces gained momentum. \nPresident Bush launched the air campaign on Oct. 7 after the Taliban refused to hand over Osama bin Laden, prime suspect in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States. \nThe Taliban admitted their lines had collapsed around Kabul -- where the front had been stalemated for years -- but said they would fight for the capital. \n"We have decided to defend Kabul," the Taliban ambassador to neighboring Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef, said in Islamabad. "It is true that the opposition breached our front line near Kabul, but we have erected another one and are strengthening our position."\nThe opposition claimed Taliban forces were fleeing Kabul. But, according to reporters in the city, there was no sign of any mass exodus, though a few senior Taliban officials appeared to have left. \nGen. Rashid Dostum, a northern alliance commander, said an opposition force of up to 300 fighters was ready to enter Kabul on Tuesday to "maintain order." \nDostum, speaking from the newly captured northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif, told Turkey's private NTV television that the main body of opposition forces would hold off from entering the capital. \nHe said 15,000 former Taliban troops and some Taliban commanders had crossed over to the alliance during recent fighting. \nOpposition fighters punched through Taliban defenses about noon Monday after a punishing attack by U.S. B-52 bombers. Taliban positions began to fall one by one along the main road into Kabul. \nA senior opposition commander, Bismillah Khan, said his troops had halted their advance at Mir Bacha Kot, about 12 miles north of Kabul, and were awaiting orders. \n"We are at the gate of Kabul," Khan declared. The alliance foreign minister, Abdullah, said another column had reached Shakar Dara -- southwest of Mir Bacha Kot and closer to the capital. \nShakar Dara "is the last stop," Abdullah, who uses one name, said at Jabal Saraj, 45 miles north of Kabul. "We stopped because we didn\'t want to advance into Kabul." \nBush has urged the opposition to avoid entering the city until a broad-based government can be organized to replace the Taliban, which has ruled most of Afghanistan since 1996. \nBut, little progress has been made in bringing together the disparate groups in Afghanistan's fractious, multiethnic society. \nAnd the temptation to grab the capital may simply be too great for the opposition, which in four days has expanded its control from some 10 percent of the country to nearly half. \nIn Kabul, the Taliban deployed tanks on major routes leading into the city, and camouflaged pickup trucks raced through the streets ferrying armed Taliban. \nTaliban fighters searched cars at major intersections throughout the city. Mobile anti-aircraft guns prowled the streets after sundown, and the roar of U.S. jets headed toward the front could be heard from time to time. \nShortly before sunset, a missile exploded along a residential street in the city's Wazir Akbar Khan neighborhood, where several senior Taliban officials as well as Arabs, Chechens and Uzbeks live. \nAssociated Press correspondents Steven Gutkin in Jabal Saraj, Afghanistan and Ellen Knickmeyer in Khoja Ghaar, Afghanistan contributed to this report.