Two of his comrades were killed, and an alliance officer seriously hurt. A former Taliban deputy interior minister who defected - the most senior Taliban defector thus far - on Saturday said he blamed bin Laden and his foreign fighters as well as extremist Taliban for bringing on the U.S.-led war. "I have being saying for a long time that the foreigners have to leave our country, that they have plans of their own and are destroying our country," Mullah Mohammed Khaqzar told reporters in Kabul, the capital. Khaqzar said he warned Taliban supreme leader Mohammed Omar that he should "tell the terrorists to leave" or they "would destroy our country." But Omar fell under the influence of bin Laden, he said. Under the surrender agreement near Kunduz, Afghan Taliban fighters were guaranteed safe passage out of the city, but the foreigners were being arrested pending investigation into possible ties to bin Laden.

The United States had strongly opposed any agreement that would allow the foreign fighters to go free President George W Bush launched airstrikes against Afghanistan on Oct. On Saturday, US jets bombed an area near the eastern city of Jalalabad, where bin Laden maintained camps. Anti-Taliban officials in the area said bin Laden was near Jalalabad when the bombing campaign began and may be hiding near his Tora Bora camp in the mountains. Alliance commanders had expected the surrender of Kunduz to take place this weekend - and as the day passed, more and more Taliban fighters appeared along front-line positions to give themselves up. "We gave up to the Northern Alliance," said a smiling Taliban fighter, Shah Mahmoud, who defected on the eastern front "They are our brothers, and this is our country The foreigners will never surrender, I think.". Northern alliance forces and US airstrikes put down a prison uprising Sunday by foreign pro-Taliban captives from the northern city of Kunduz, US and alliance spokesmen said.

The alliance and a member of the US special forces at the scene said hundreds of foreign fighters were killed. The prisoners were mostly Pakistanis, Chechens and Arabs believed loyal to Osama bin Laden. Alliance spokesman Zaher Wahadat said they seized weapons from their guards and captured an ammunition depot, using it to fight the troops deployed to put down the unrest. A Pentagon spokesman said about 300 fighters took part in the riot, which was put down with US airstrikes and fighters of northern alliance Gen. Rashid Dostum, who controls the Qalai Janghi fortress where the riot took place.

"They were all killed and very few were arrested," Wahadat said. Footage from a German television crew that was inside the compound, 15 kilometers (10 miles) west of Mazar-e-Sharif, showed guards atop walls firing down into crowds of prisoners below. As tanks rolled into the compound, a member of the US special forces who identified himself only as David could be seen on a telephone calling in airstrikes, the footage from the ARD network showed. "There's hundreds dead here at least," he could be overheard saying. Yahsaw, a spokesman for northern alliance commander Mohammed Mohaqik, said the prisoners broke down the doors and tried to escape, then battled all day with guards at the Qalai Janghi fortress The Pentagon spokesman, Lt Col. Dan Stoneking, confirmed that some US special forces were in the compound when the fighting broke out, and said "it appears all US personnel are accounted for" and believed safe.