Ex-Taliban men die in helicopter crash

The head guard of the assassinated Northern Alliance leader, Ahmed Shah Masood, and two senior Taliban defectors were among 20 people killed in a helicopter crash in northern Afghanistan on Saturday.

Two renowned ethnic Pashtun leaders, Arbab Mohammad Hashim and Mirza Ghulam Nasiri, who are thought to have defected to the Northern Alliance after the Taliban were routed from the northern province of Kunduz last month, were killed when their helicopter crashed in the mountainous Takhar province, near the town of Farkhar.

Mr Hashim's supporters told the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press yesterday they believed the Northern Alliance deliberately crashed the helicopter to kill Mr Hashim but the Alliance said it was an accident.

Another victim was Mohammad Mustafa, the commander of a unit that had guarded the Alliance's late military chief Ahmed Shah Masood, who was assassinated by suspected al-Qa'ida suicide bombers two days before the 11 September attacks.

A foreign ministry official in Taloqan said the MI-8 helicopter had left the town bound for Kabul with 20 military personnel on board.

The helicopter crashed in the northern province bordering Tajikistan on Saturday night but the reason for the crash was not immediately clear.

The deaths in the crash come after six Northern Alliance troops and three US soldiers were killed near Kandahar in a "friendly fire" incident last Wednesday by a stray 2,000lb American bomb.

On Friday, an American helicopter crashed in flames near the US Marines' forward operating base near Kandahar. One of four marines on board and another on the ground received minor injuries but the Pentagon ruled out the involvement of either hostile or friendly fire in that incident.