THE REBEL Taleban militia seized Afghanistan's main eastern city of Jalalabad yesterday and vowed to enforce Islamic Sharia law in surrounding Nangarhar province, Afghan sources said.
Taleban spokesmen in neighbouring Pakistan and witnesses and other Afghan sources said the Islamic militia captured the provincial capital with very little fighting.
They seized Jalalabad hours after troops loyal to President Burhanuddin Rabbani's government in Kabul took control from a previously neutral council.
Later the militia fighters advanced on the 75km eastern highway to Pakistan and had come up to 5km from the Torkham border crossing, Afghan sources said.
Earlier, an apparent peace mission ended in bloodbath when the Nangarhar acting governor, Engineer Mahmood, and 69 other people were shot dead while driving towards the Pakistan border, a survivor said.
A former Nangarhar corps commander, Mr Fazle Hag Mujahid, told reporters at the Pakistan border that the attack was carried out by the fighters of a rival commander apparently to avenge the murder of his brother.
A Pakistan based Afghan news service, the Afghan Islamic Press (AIP), said the group seemed to be heading for peace talks with Taleban leaders when they were shot.
Mr Mahmood, a commander of the neutral Hezb-i-Islami faction, was killed only hours after he had been appointed acting governor.
An Afghan government spokesman accused Pakistan of conspiring and aiding the Taleban attack, signalling a return to frosty relations between the two governments.
A Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokesman rejected the charge as unfounded and said Islamabad had been trying to promote intraAfghan talks to bring peace to the war shattered country.
Pakistan evacuated eight staff members of its consulate in Jalalabad after government troops arrived there earlier yesterday to try to stop the pre announced Taleban advance, a staff member said.