Taliban Reject Offer

KANDAHAR - Six armed Arab fighters holed up in a hospital in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar rejected Thursday a fresh attempt at persuading them to surrender. The Arabs, most of whom are believed to be from Yemen and suspected of being members of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network, have been barricaded in the former female ward of the Mirwais hospital for over a month. “This morning we again sent a message to them through a translator to tell them not to put their lives or the lives of the other persons in the hospital in danger,” a guard, requesting anonymity told AFP. But they rejected the offer, he said. AFPEnds