Representatives of more than 50 Islamic countries have asked the UN to investigate the deaths of hundreds of foreign captives in Afghanistan.

US and British special forces helped Northern Alliance fighters battling captured loyalists of Osama bin Laden for a third day today in a sprawling mud-walled fortress in northern Afghanistan.

Afghanistan’s de facto government, the Northern Alliance, claimed today that it has crushed the Taliban uprising in a prison outside Mazar-e-Sharif following three days of intense fighting.

There are reports hundreds of fighters captured in the siege of Kunduz have been killed in a prison riot.