Anti-Taliban Forces Confirm Kabul Attack
Tuesday September 11 11:42 PM ET
 
KABUL (Reuters) - The anti-Taliban Afghan opposition said it carried out an air and rocket assault on Kabul airport early on Wednesday in retaliation against Taliban jet attacks on their forces.

Kabul residents were woken up by massive explosions from the combined military-civil airport northeast of the city, fearing that the United States had launched a retaliatory attack for Tuesday's terror attack on targets in New York and Washington.

``Two of our helicopter gunships took part in this operation,'' said Bismillah Khan, a top commander of the anti-Taliban force.

He said opposition forces also fired medium-range Russian-built missiles at the airport. Explosions, punctuated by Taliban anti-aircraft fire, lasted for almost 10 minutes.

``We had to do something to stop their attacks and that was the only way,'' Khan told Reuters on satellite phone from a location north of Kabul, where the opposition forces have been dug in since being driven from Kabul in 1996.

The assault followed an intensification of Taliban attacks after reports the top opposition military commander Ahmad Shah Masood had died in an assassination. The opposition say Masood survived with serious injuries.