An AFP reporter saw 50 or 60 troops of the Northern Alliance, with their distinctive pakool caps, entering the city from the north in jeeps and four-by-four vehicles.

They were armed with kalashnikov rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers. No Taliban fighters were sighted in the city except for a group of four escorted by opposition soldiers.

On one street lay three or four bodies of Taliban soldiers, apparently blown up by US warplanes.

Small crowds of Kabul residents lined the streets in the north of the city to cheer the arrival of the Northern Alliance forces. They chanted "Allah o Akhbar (God is Great)" as the opposition troops shouted the same greeting.

"They have already arrived. They have already arrived," exulted Mohammed Ajmal, a resident in the north of Kabul. "The Taliban have gone. The Taliban have gone."

In a sign that the Taliban influence had waned in the city, local men were seen without the turbans required by the Islamic regime, and were walking with simple caps.

It was not immediately clear if the Northern Alliance planned to bring its entire force into Kabul after pledging to abide by US wishes that it stay out of the capital. No spokesmen were immediately available for comment.

Washington had been urging the Northern Alliance, a fractious coalition of mostly ethnic minorities, to surround but not enter Kabul to allow time for the constitution of a government acceptable to the dominant Pashtuns.

But US officials acknowledged they had "no control" over the opposition push and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan stressed the need for quick talks on setting up a government to keep pace with developments on the ground.

The Taliban defeat in Kabul was a huge triumph for the US-led coalition seeking to topple the Islamic regime for harboring Osama bin Laden, wanted for the September 11 terror attacks on the United States.

The opposition forces had stood poised on the edge of capital after powering through the Taliban's defensive front lines Monday in a two-pronged assault by some 7,000 to 8,000 men backed by tanks and artillery.

The move followed a series of dramatic victories for the opposition across the north, starting with Friday's capture of the key city of Mazar-i-Sharif and the taking Monday of the rich trading center of Herat in the west.