Inside the Battle at Qala-I-Jangi

From a ruined 19th century fortress, TIME correspondent Alex Perry records the crushing of a Taliban revolt

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OLEG NIKISHIN/GETTY IMAGES FOR TIME

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The next morning, two Americans went to meet the prisoners at Qala-i-Jangi. Their mission at the fortress: to identify any members of al-Qaeda among the prisoners. But the Americans didn't conduct the interviews one by one--another mistake. Instead, at 11:15 a.m., the pair--Johnny Micheal Spann, 32, one of the CIA agents who had been active in Afghanistan since the war's beginning, the other identified by colleagues only as "Dave"--were taken to an open area outside the cells and a group of prisoners brought to meet them. According to members of a German television crew who were later trapped in the fort with Dave, Spann asked the prisoners who they were and why they joined the Taliban. They massed around him. "Why are you here?" Spann asked one. "To kill you," came the reply as the man lunged at Spann's neck. Spann drew his pistol and shot the man dead. Dave shot another, then grabbed an AK-47 from an Alliance guard and opened fire. According to eyewitness accounts given to the German team, the Taliban fighters launched themselves at Spann, scrabbling at his flesh with their hands, kicking and beating him. Spann killed two more with his pistol before he disappeared under the crush. An Alabaman with a wife and three children, Spann became the first American to die in combat in Afghanistan.

The Taliban then overpowered the Alliance guards, killing them with their own weapons. Dave mowed down three more Taliban, then sprinted to the main building along the north wall, where two Red Cross workers had just begun a meeting with the prison governor. "He burst in and told us to get out of there," says Simon Brooks, a Briton and a Red Cross staff member. "He was really shaken up. He said there were 20 dead Northern Alliance guys, and the Taliban were taking control of the fort." As Dave stayed behind to try to rescue Spann, the two Red Cross workers climbed up to the fort's parapet, hoisted themselves over the wall and slid 60 ft. down the other side. Meanwhile, the firing had alerted a pair of TV crews. They too ran to the main building; there they found Dave and were pinned down in the ensuing fire fight.

A few hundred yards to the south, in the prison block, the Taliban freed its comrades. Three escaped through a drain under the southern wall; all were soon shot by Alliance soldiers outside the fort. The Taliban fighters, trapped in the southwestern quarter of the fort, stormed a nearby armory, making off with AK-47s, grenades, mines, rocket launchers, mortars and ammunition. Alliance soldiers held on to the southeastern corner, which included an arched gateway, a courtyard and the gatekeeper's house. Other fighters took positions on the north wall and the roof of the main building. A vicious exchange of fire across the grassy parade ground followed. Two Alliance tanks along the north wall started firing into the Taliban area.

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