ALALABAD, Afghanistan, Sept. 16 ・Thousands of Afghan fighters streamed through the dusty mountain trails of the Panjshir Valley today to bury Ahmed Shah Massoud, their legendary commander who held together the last remaining resistance to the Taliban government.

Mr. Massoud, who was 48, was laid to rest in his home village of Basarak, north of the capital, Kabul, after dying on Saturday morning of wounds sustained in an assassination attempt a week ago.

The audacious attack was carried out by two Arab men posing as journalists, according to witnesses. An explosive device ・most likely concealed in a television camera ・went off as the guerrilla commander who had survived countless battles sat for an interview in Khwaja Bahaouddin, one of his northeastern redoubts.

The event spawned a flurry of conflicting reports about whether he was still alive. Through the week, several spokesmen continued to quote him.

But the images of thousands of his supporters, some bearing flags or seated atop armored vehicles, pouring over the craggy hillsides of the mighty Hindu Kush mountain range to mourn him today erased any lingering doubt as to the commander's fate.

Mr. Massoud's death caused confusion among the anti-Taliban forces, but his absence leaves turmoil on a much larger scale. Mr. Massoud's only title was defense minister in the deposed government of the aging Burhanuddin Rabbani, the Afghan rulers who were driven out of Kabul by the Taliban in 1996 and whose leaders are still recognized as legitimate by most countries. But in practice the charismatic guerrilla fighter ・the so-called Lion of the Panjshir ・was what kept the remaining anti-Taliban forces together.

Mr. Rabbani called Mr. Massoud a "national hero" who had martyred himself in jihad, or holy war. Without citing evidence, he claimed the assassination had been a "conspiracy involving Pakistan, the terrorist group of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban."

Immediately after the assassination attempt, there was speculation that the so-called United Front ・a loose alliance of anti-Taliban forces ・would fall apart. But two days later, the terrorist attacks against America occurred and, with the Taliban defiantly playing host to Mr. bin Laden, there are now likely to be new elements in the mix.

Most recently, the United Front has relied on support from Iran, Russia and other sources. This past year, two other well-known commanders, Ismail Khan and Rashid Dostum, re- entered the fray, but they had yet to make much of an impact.

The alliance's primary strongholds were Mr. Massoud's remaining bastions in the Shomali Plains, north of Kabul; Badakshan Province in the far northeast; and the storied Panjshir Valley.

A few days ago, Mr. Massoud's intelligence chief, Gen. Mohammad Fahim, was appointed the United Front's temporary defense chief. Today photographs showed Mr. Fahim praying with open hands over Mr. Massoud's coffin, which was covered in flowers and draped in a flag bearing crossed swords befitting a guerrilla commander.

Though neither he nor anyone else in the ranks of the resistance approaches Mr. Massoud's stature, Mr. Fahim is himself a veteran of many campaigns, enough that he has built a legend of his own. He is known as the Lion of Herat.

"Ismail Khan is likely to emerge," said Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani journalist and expert on the Taliban. "He is the most credible anti-Taliban commander."

As stunning as Mr. Massoud's assassination was, it might well have been presumed that his death would not come as a gentle passing. He spent more than half his life at war, beginning while he was an engineering student in Kabul.

His fame was built on the decade- long campaign against the Soviets, an epic resistance. Seven times the invaders went up against his forces; seven times they failed.

But after the Soviets left Afghanistan in ignoble retreat, the country's misery grew worse rather than better. The mujahedeen, which had once seemed a monolithic horde of religious soldiers, revealed age-old ethnic rivalries between Pathans, Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras and Turkmen.

Mr. Rabbani, a former theology professor, became president in 1992. Mr. Massoud was appointed defense minister.

Their Tajik-dominated government reeled from Day 1. Kabul became a war zone, each day more of it chewed away by mortar fire and rocket blasts. Mujahedeen commanders, each with his own militia, made alliances, double-crossed each other, then allied again.

The nation was lawless. The Taliban, with their puritanical version of Islam, were born from this chaos.

When the Taliban marched into Kabul in September 1996, Mr. Massoud barely escaped with his life. Since then, he had presided over an ever-smaller den, so much so that his Taliban enemies began to taunt him, saying he was more fox than lion, forever retreating back into his hole. Still, they could not make him surrender. "This is all the space I need in order to fight," Mr. Massoud liked to say, tossing down his beret, the Afghan pakool that looks much like a felt pie crust.

As the Taliban grew internationally notorious, banning television and imposing beards, sheathing women head-to-toe and amputating the hands of thieves, Mr. Massoud enjoyed presenting himself to the West as a "reasonable" Muslim.

"I am for the rights of women," he said. "Women can work. Women can go to school."

He made a good impression on Westerners ・and he knew this. He spoke French. He liked to reflect on his study of architecture. More than anything he cut a dapper figure, with a forehead full of deep furrows, with a tightly tailored jacket, with the cocked pakool.

But upon closer inspection he did not always seem a man of modernity and enlightenment. When the Taliban banned the growing of poppy last year, Mr. Massoud allowed the crop to flourish in his own domain. And once asked if his own wife wore the head-to-toe burqa, he smiled sheepishly and replied, "Yes, this is the custom."