Battles rage in Afghanistan

US air strikes targeted outnumbered and cornered followers of Osama bin Laden today as a prison uprising in northern Afghanistan stretched into its third day.

In the south, American Marines went into action after setting up a desert base beside a small mosque.

At the mud-walled fortress near Mazar-e-Sharif, where the prisoners were still resisting, US special forces helped coordinate air attacks on the last holdouts.

Northern Alliance commanders said hundreds of the captives were already dead.

As warplanes circled overhead and reinforcements poured in today, mortar shells exploded around the complex and an enormous blast shook windows in Mazar-e-Sharif, 10 miles away.

Five Americans seriously wounded at the fortress yesterday when a US air strike went astray were treated in Uzbekistan and were being evacuated to Landstuhl Medical Centre in Ramstein, Germany, said General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

A CIA operative remained unaccounted for, another US official said.

US President George Bush said Americans ‘‘must be prepared for loss of life.’’

As Taliban control receded, diplomats urged representatives of four Afghan factions beginning talks today in Bonn, Germany, to quickly build a new security force and an interim administration to replace it.

‘‘Speed is of the essence in view of the situation on the ground,’’ said Ahmad Fawzi, the UN spokesman for Afghanistan.

A senior US official said none of the factions can expect aid to rebuild their war-ravaged country unless they agree on a broad-based government.

Marines moved in on what was left of the Taliban leadership near the southern city of Kandahar.

The city is the Taliban’s last remaining bastion after a retreat this month from most of Afghanistan, including the capital, Kabul.

Seizing an airstrip west of Kandahar without resistance yesterday, the Marines quickly sent up helicopter gunships as Navy F-14 Tomcat jets attacked an armoured convoy of 15 vehicles.

Some of the vehicles in the column were destroyed, Captain David Romley said.

The Marines’ commander, General James Mattis, said more than 1,000 troops would soon be on the ground.

The Taliban vowed to fight to the death in Kandahar. A spokesman, Mullah Abdullah, told the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press that Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar was still in town and in command of his troops.

Kandahar appeared largely deserted, except for pick-up trucks of Taliban soldiers armed with rocket launchers and Kalashnikovs, according to residents contacted by phone.

While US and local forces moved in on the Taliban’s southern base, others battled the last pockets of resistance in the north.

Prisoners captured by the alliance last weekend in the siege of Kunduz rained rocket-propelled grenades and mortars on alliance troops near Mazar-e-Sharif.

Reinforcements continued to pour in today. ‘‘We have come to help the other soldiers,’’ said Karim Pahlawan, a Northern Alliance commander arriving with 200 troops and an anti-aircraft gun.

Hundreds of Pakistanis, Chechens, Arabs and other non-Afghans fighting with the Taliban were taken to the fortress as part of the weekend surrender of Kunduz, the Islamic militia’s last stronghold in the north, for an investigation into their links with bin Laden.

But once inside the fortress on Sunday, the prisoners stormed the armoury and were still resisting two days later despite US air strikes and attacks by alliance forces.

Alliance officers said about 40 of their troops had died along with hundreds of resisters. Alliance commanders said the holdouts, trapped in a tower, were running out of ammunition and wouldn’t last long.

‘‘Those who are left over will be dead,’’ said Alim Razim, an aide to alliance Gen. Rashid Dostum. ‘‘None of them can escape.’’

In Kunduz, thousands of Afghan Taliban fighters who gave up were allowed free, but some Afghan fighters remained behind and fired on alliance troops who entered the city on Monday after the two week siege.

After a long battle that killed 100 Taliban and 10 alliance troops, alliance fighters exacted brutal revenge. Reporters watched as alliance soldiers blasted away at wounded Taliban and dragged away those who hid in their houses for beatings.

Alliance soldiers also made off with loot, especially cars they said belonged to Taliban fighters. One man used rope to string four cars together.

The unrest stretched to the nearby town of Taloqan, the base of many journalists covering the Kunduz siege, where a Swedish television journalist was killed today in an overnight robbery.

Ulf Stroemberg, of the Swedish television network TV4, was the eighth journalist to die in Afghanistan since the start of the US-led military campaign on October 7. He was 42.