US and British commandos help Alliance in Mazar-e-Sharif

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.

US warplanes circled high above the Qalai Janghi fortress, where Taliban prisoners captured in the siege of Kunduz last weekend rained rocket-propelled grenades and mortars on alliance troops trying to suppress the uprising.