The bloody battle of the Qala-i-Jhangi fort took an extraordinary twist yesterday when it emerged that at least one of the Taliban prisoners, all of whom were assumed dead, was still alive, surviving by eating horse meat and hiding deep in an underground complex.
Five unarmed Afghan Red Cross workers, who ventured into the basement where a small group of Taliban fighters had concealed themselves, retreated in panic when shots were fired at them in the dark from down a corridor. One worker was hit in the arm and another in the leg.
Troops knew that the last survivors of the 400 Taliban who began a revolt at the fort on Sunday were down there. At least two Pakistani Taliban prisoners were heard talking in Urdu on Wednesday morning. They wounded a soldier who tried to enter their lair.
A Northern Alliance commander then fired nine rockets directly into the hideout.
The soldiers who had been guarding all escape routes from the basement went home, assuming the prisoners were dead.
The Afghan Red Cross workers wandered into the complex at mid-day yesterday, nearly 24 hours later, after they were told to bring out the bodies of the dead foreign fighters.
One of the wounded aid workers said: "We had gone down about 20 or 30 steps when someone started shooting at us. I was shot in the arm. We hid in a corner of a wall and then we ran away."
Before retreating to make their final stand underground the Taliban prisoners shot dead a horse from the stable area nearby and dragged it into the basement, sources said. They have apparently been eating horsemeat since then.