Afghan opposition commander Ahmad Shah Masood was to be buried at his birthplace in Bozarak district of his beloved Panjshir Valley on Sunday, resistance officials said.
Hundreds of Masood's fighters, opposition leaders and villages were gathering to attend the ceremony in the valley northeast of the Afghan capital Kabul, which the commander defended from invaders for more than 30 years.
Masood, 48, died early Saturday from injuries suffered in a suicide bombing the previous Sunday, dealing a major blow to the northern-based forces battling the Taliban regime.
With the Taliban and their Saudi-born ally, bin Laden, accused of complicity, there has been inevitable speculation linking the bombing to Tuesday's terrorist atrocities in the United States.
In the concluding years of his life, Masood was seen as the last obstacle to the Taliban gaining control of the remaining 10 percent of Afghanistan not in their hands.
The rest was controlled by a northern-based opposition alliance led by Masood, a loose and fractious patchwork of factions riven by ethnic and sectarian divisions.
Russia sent its condolences and said it would continue to support the alliance. From Moscow, Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov said Russia's "cooperation in restoring peace and stability in Afghanistan will be continued."
As Masood's supporters prepared to bury him, alliance leaders met to discuss the situation after his death, officials said.
Field commanders and political leaders including Rabbani attended the gathering, which comes ahead of possible US military reprisals against Taliban-held Afghanistan.
The opposition official in the Panjshir village of Malaspa, where a group of journalists were flown from Dushanbe on Saturday, warned that the anti-Taliban forces faced a "critical situation".
"There is no one really to replace Masood," he added, speaking on condition of anonymity -- PANJSHIR VALLEY, Afghanistan (AFP)
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