Thousands mourn anti-Taliban leader

Large crowds have attended the funeral of the main leader of the anti-Taliban forces in Afghanistan, Ahmed Shah Masood.

Weeping mourners carried pictures of the veteran commander, as he was buried near his home village in the heart of the Panjshir Valley in northern Afghanistan.

There was a clear sense of personal grief among those present, to whom Mr Masood was much more than a military leader.

The commander died after a suicide bomb attack a week ago by two men disguised as Arab journalists.

Taliban blamed

The leader of the ousted Afghan government, President Burhanuddin Rabbani, said that Mr Masood would not be forgotten.

He said the Taliban and their supporters in Pakistan were responsible for the commander's death.

"The Taliban are under the control of Osama bin Laden and Pakistan. Such people will be eradicated at once if God is willing," he said.

Mr Masood's son, also called Ahmed, addressed the mourners.

"I want to follow the path of my father and to pursue the independence of my country," he told them.

Mr Masood's body was brought by helicopter to the scene and loaded onto a gun carriage.

As the mourners moved towards the venue for the funeral service, a voice called out through a loudspeaker:

"Death to Pakistan. Death to the Taliban. Death to Osama. We will fight for our freedom to the very end."

Ahmed Shah Masood's death was announced on Saturday following days of conflicting reports.

The 49-year-old commander had been giving an interview to two Arabs posing as journalists when a bomb went off. It had been concealed in a video camera.

He was not in fact the official leader of the opposition to the Taliban, but he was widely seen as the real obstacle to their conquest of the remaining enclaves of Afghanistan.

His troops hold the strategic Panjshir valley north of Kabul and mountainous country even further north.

Masood gained the name "Lion of Panjshir" for his resistance to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan from 1979, and went on to become defence minister after Kabul was recaptured in 1992.

But warring factions within the Government brought new conflict to Kabul. Then a new force backed by Pakistan, the Taliban, swept through the country and took the capital for themselves in 1996.