Fighter Captured in Hospital Siege

One of eight wounded foreign fighters holed up in a hospital in the southern city of Kandahar has been arrested by U.S. forces, the local Afghan commander said Saturday.

The fighter was detained after he emerged from a ward seeking treatment.

The wounded foreigners loyal to Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network barricaded themselves in their ward Tuesday, a day after shooting broke out in the hospital when Afghan forces tried to flush them out.

Security guards have tried to persuade them to surrender, but they have threatened to blow themselves up with grenades.

One of the foreigners, an Arab, was brought out of the ward late Friday by a doctor because he needed an injection.

He came out only after the doctor had received assurances that he would not be arrested, said Ismail Khan, security commander at the hospital.

But the foreigner was taken to the doctor’s superior, who handed the Arab over to the Americans.

“They took him to the airport,” Khan said.

U.S. forces in Afghanistan are holding several dozen captured fighters from the vanquished Taliban and the Al Qaeda army at a detention camp set up at Kandahar airport and on a U.S. warship.

The eight injured fighters were among a group of 19 foreigners brought to the hospital a few days before Kandahar, once the spiritual heartland of the radical Islamic Taliban government, fell to Afghan tribal fighters Dec. 7.

The crisis was sparked when one of the Al Qaeda foreigners, who identified himself as Amin and said he came from China, was tricked last week by a hospital staffer who said he could smuggle the group to Pakistan.

He shouted a warning to his comrades, who cut off all contact with hospital staff and barricaded themselves in Ward 4. Seven are still there.

The Northern Alliance, the main military opposition to the Taliban until it was routed, has faced difficulties in holding and disarming Al Qaeda prisoners.

In late November, hundreds were killed when about 500 prisoners held in the Qala-i-Jangy fort near the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif seized weapons from their Northern Alliance captors and staged a bloody revolt.