Northern Alliance shows carnage inside fortress

The Northern Alliance has opened a fortress up to journalists near Mazar-e-Sharif after crushing a three-day uprising by Taliban prisoners.

Dozens of dead bodies can be seen in the courtyard of the mud-walled Qalai Jangh fortress.

Northern Alliance officers say the revolt has been successfully put down with the help of American air strikes and special forces.

Alliance commander General Rashid Dostum maintains that his men are in control of the scene.

He revealed, though, that his troops were trying to capture two Taliban fighters thought to be hiding inside the body-filled core of the prison.

"Two dangerous people are still there," he said. "Maybe some are lying among corpses. They are suicidal people and one can expect anything from them."

The scene is one of almost complete devastation. Bodies and unexploded ordinance littered its grounds. Walls were demolished and windows shattered. A mortar shell that had been dormant for hours exploded without warning.

Nearby a dead Taliban soldier laid in the dust with his arms outstretched toward the sky. Other victims, and even a horse, had been blown apart.

General Dostum declined to say how many Taliban had been killed. However, he said 30 of his officers had died and another 200 alliance troops had been injured.

Simon Brooks, the chief of an international Red Cross delegation, declined to estimate the death toll. He said Red Cross workers wanted to remove the bodies for identification and burial.