Aid Workers Pulled From Afghan Capital

Rival leaders assembled in the north Friday in a new alliance against the advancing Taliban army, while international aid groups, fearing a new military onslaught, evacuated foreign staff from the capital.

At least 36 foreign aid workers were flown out of Kabul’s rocket-scarred airport to neighboring Pakistan.

The International Committee of the Red Cross reduced its staff to essential personnel only, but several organizations, including Save the Children, Oxfam and CARE, pulled foreign staff out completely.

The evacuations followed intense fighting north of the capital between Taliban fighters--who have overrun two-thirds of Afghanistan--and forces loyal to former government military chief Ahmed Shah Masoud.

Masoud’s soldiers have carried out dozens of guerrilla-style, hit-and-run attacks on Taliban soldiers along the road leading north from Kabul.

Witnesses said the Taliban fighters were attacked 12 miles north of the capital Friday, although the fighting appeared to be limited to small arms and heavy machine-gun fire.

At the mouth of the Panjsher valley, about 90 miles north of Kabul, Taliban soldiers were dug in with heavy artillery, tanks and multiple rocket launchers aimed at the former government troops farther north.

The Taliban fighters also faced scattered resistance from residents of several villages north of the capital.

It took the Taliban’s conquest of the capital and overthrow of the government two weeks ago to bring Masoud together with Abdul Rashid Dostum, commander of the only other military force still capable of standing up to the Taliban.

Their alliance was formed Thursday after Dostum and Masoud met for the first time in more than two years. The onetime deadly rivals both claim parts of northern Afghanistan.

The alliance signed a pact establishing a new government that “must respect the demands, cultures and opinions of others,” Dostum’s spokesman said. “It must be moderate and acceptable to people inside Afghanistan.”

Deposed President Burhanuddin Rabbani, Shiite Muslim leader Karim Khalili and Jaffar Naderi, the leader of a small but well-armed Ismaili Muslim sect, gathered Friday at Dostum’s headquarters in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif.

All alliance members belong to Afghanistan’s minority ethnic and religious groups. The Taliban, by comparison, are mostly ethnic Pushtuns and members of the majority Sunni Muslim sect.