Taliban Begins Assault On Last Valley Held By Former Afghan Rulers Remnants Of Government Army Holed Up In Panjshir Valley

Taliban fighters struggled up rugged mountains Saturday and tanks and heavy artillery pounded a northern valley to flush out government soldiers driven from the Afghan capital a week ago.

After a blistering daylong assault on the Panjshir Valley, the Taliban claimed to have captured three mountain peaks and some heavy artillery.

Tanks and rocket launchers bombarded the area and four helicopter gunships swooped low into the valley, 90 miles north of Kabul, blasting government positions and dodging anti-aircraft fire.

There were unconfirmed reports that Taliban jets also bombed the valley in their attempt to rout soldiers led by former government military chief Ahmed Shah Massood. The Taliban - a movement that sprang from religious schools in neighboring Pakistan - threw Massood and the president out of Kabul on Sept. 27 and now control more than two-thirds of Afghanistan.

The militants, who impose their strict interpretation of Islam where they rule, have vowed to push Massood’s forces out of Afghanistan or kill them.

From his bases in the Panjshir Valley, Massood had fought invading Soviet troops as well as Afghanistan’s communist soldiers before Muslim rebels threw them out in 1992.

The only other significant area of the country not under Taliban control is several provinces farther north, where Uzbek warlord Rashid Dostum rules.

In Kabul, Information Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi said the Taliban did not want to fight Dostum. “We are negotiating with Dostum and have no problems with him,” he said.

Dostum, a former communist, has said he is ready to negotiate, but warned the Taliban against trying to rule his territory.

Some within the Taliban have vowed to conquer all of Afghanistan.

Muttaqi also warned Russia and the Central Asian states not to interfere in Afghanistan’s internal affairs.

Russia and Tajikistan agreed Saturday to step up the defense of the Tajik-Afghan border in response to the Taliban victory. Russia wants to prevent the Taliban from joining up with Tajik rebels who are fighting the Moscow-backed Tajik government from Afghanistan.

“The Russians are too weak even to handle what is happening in Chechnya, and they would be wise to remember their bitter experience in Afghanistan,” Muttaqi told The Associated Press in an interview in Kabul.

“Russia is too weak a country to deliver any kind of warning to anyone,” he said.

The Russian army lost 15,000 soldiers fighting Islamic militants in Afghanistan before its bitter withdrawal in 1989. Russia is now withdrawing troops from separatist Chechnya after 21 months of war.

Kyrgyz President Askar Akayev also said Saturday that his country is taking measures to strengthen its border with Tajikistan. He told the ITAR-Tass news agency that a widening of the Afghan conflict could create millions of refugees, who could move through Tajikistan and into Kyrgyzstan if the border is not properly defended.