Kunduz market reopens as authorities announce: 'This is peace'

Kunduz shopkeepers heeded city officials’ instructions and reopened today, the day after Northern Alliance troops drove the last Taliban fighters out of the city following a two week siege.

‘‘This is peace,’’ the officials announced repeatedly in the central market square as they encouraged merchants to do their part to return calm to the city, which had been the final Taliban stronghold in northern Afghanistan.

Thousands of Afghan Taliban fighters who gave up were allowed safe passage out of Kunduz. However, some Afghan fighters remained behind and fired on alliance troops who entered the city yesterday after the siege.

After a long battle with rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons, Alliance forces crushed the last of the resistance. Following the battle, Alliance soldiers wandered the streets looking for vengeance, shooting wounded Taliban and dragging Taliban fighters out of houses to be beaten.

Shops in Kunduz had been closed for days out of fear of US air strikes and foreign fighters, who would lash out and beat anyone they saw on the streets, Kunduz residents said.

The market was buzzing with men today, but no women were in sight.

A jail in the village of Qurbragh, on the former eastern front between the towns of Taloqan and Kunduz, held many Taliban prisoners today. Journalists were not allowed to speak to the prisoners.

Jailers said other foreign prisoners had all committed suicide in a trench during the fighting in Kunduz. The account could not be independently confirmed.

Remnants of previous prisoners’ stay in the jail attested to the iron grip in which the Taliban recently held the region.

One file said the prisoner ‘‘listened to the radio three times despite warning.’’

Another prisoner had left behind a letter saying he had been imprisoned because he ‘‘listened to music and the radio too often.’’