Britain will send more troops to keep peace

War on terrorism: The advance

There were strong indications that Britain will announce a significant additional deployment of troops to Afghanistan, as part of an effort by the the international community to keep up with the speed of the Taliban collapse.

The extra deployment is expected to include new units to join Royal Marines who will be policing Afghanistan alongside Northern Alliance forces, defence sources said.

Last night, there was confirmation that a small number of US troops were inside Kabul. Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, said they would "provide advice" to the Northern Alliance.

In an almost unstoppable tide, the Alliance took control of Kabul yesterday, while American aircraft pounded the columns of Taliban troops who abandoned the city in the early hours of the morning.

The Taliban's leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, called on the movement's followers in a radio address to stand and fight. But last night there were reports of popular uprisings in the eastern city of Jalalabad and in the Taliban's southern stronghold of Kandahar, where Pashtun tribal fighters claimed they had captured the city's airport.

Political efforts to put together a government went into high gear. The United Nations decided to dispatch a diplomatic team to the Afghan capital immediately, announcing plans for a multi-ethnic, two-year transitional government that would be backed by a security force drawn from a variety of nations that could include Turkey and Jordan as well as European troops.

As the Alliance forces continued their sweep across the country, the central city of Bamiyan was captured, and Herat in the west fell at dawn to forces commanded by the former governor, Ismail Khan, who triumphantly returned to the city he used to rule. In Herat, again, the regime withdrew without a fight. But in northern Afghanistan a battle loomed as the Northern Alliance surrounded the city of Kunduz, where Taliban forces, supported by Arab, Chechen and Pakistani volunteers, prepared to fight to the death.

As Taliban forces yielded up large sections of the country, crossings along the border with Pakistan were abandoned. At the Torkham frontier post at the head of the Khyber Pass, which links Peshawar and Jalalabad, local elders were meeting to decide who should be in charge.

Stephanie Bunker, a UN spokeswoman in Islamabad, cited reports of summary executions in Mazar-i-Sharif, the first city to fall to the Alliance. "In Mazar, sources corroborated that more than 100 Taliban troops who were young recruits hiding in a school were killed by Northern Alliance forces on Saturday at 6pm," she said.

The recruits are believed to be part of a group of several hundred Pakistani volunteers who arrived in Mazar only two days before.

Confirmation of the reports will cause outrage in Pakistan. Last night, there were also reports of a Taliban counter-attack in Mazar.

As the Taliban retreated from Kabul, they took with them eight foreign aid workers, six women and two men, who had been accused of spreading Christianity. Ajmal Mir, a guard at the abandoned detention centre where the eight had been held, said: "I saw them with my own eyes. They put them in the truck and then left at midnight. They said they are going to Kandahar."

Heavily armed Alliance troops roamed Kabul, hunting Taliban stragglers and their foreign allies from Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'ida movement. At least 11 Taliban Pakistanis and Arabs were killed.

President George Bush had urged the opposition to stay out of the capital until a government could be formed to replace the Taliban, but Alliance officials said the unexpected Taliban evacuation meant they had to go in to maintain public order.

They said the main Alliance force remained outside Kabul, and that only 2,500 security forces, but with tanks, had been sent in to police the city. The opposition defence spokesman, Mohammad Fahim, and the foreign affairs spokesman, Dr Abdullah Abdullah, drove into the city at midday, followed by the special security troops in cars festooned with pictures of their assassinated commander, Ahmed Shah Masood.

In Kandahar, a resident contacted by phone said the city was threatened by anarchy because many Taliban figures appeared to have left the city except for uniformed militia police. He thought the fighters were fleeing to the southern mountains to mount a guerrilla war.

At the Chaman border crossing, which links Kandahar with the Pakistani city of Quetta, Mullah Najibullah, a Taliban official, said about 200 militiamen who had been aligned with the Taliban mounted a mutiny in Kandahar. Anti-Taliban forces had seized part of the airport in fierce fighting.

In Mullah Omar's radio address, his first since the Alliance launched its advance last week, he said he was still in Kandahar and urged his followers to organise and resist opposition troops. "I order you completely to obey your commanders and not to go hither and thither," he told his troops over their military wireless sets.

"Any person who goes hither and thither is like a slaughtered chicken that falls and dies. You should regroup yourselves, resist and fight."

There was no independent confirmationof Mullah Omar's whereabouts, and still less of his "guest", Mr bin Laden.