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Gunmen Attack British Peacekeepers
Sun Feb 17,12:06 AM ET
By LAURA KING, AP Special Correspondent
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - Peacekeepers in the Afghan capital came under fire for the first time Saturday, their commander said. Interim Prime Minister Hamid Karzai, speaking at the grave of a slain government minister, prayed for an end to "the culture of the knife and the gun."
The shooting was the latest in violence this week that has raised security worries in the capital, which has been calm since Karzai's government was inaugurated in December.
The six British peacekeepers returned fire after their observation post was shot at early Saturday, the commander said. Later, a patrol found one person dead in a nearby house, he said.
Also, a group of Afghan civilians in Kabul reported they were shot at about 1 a.m. Saturday near a peacekeepers' post as they were trying to drive a pregnant woman to the hospital. A 19-year-old man was killed.
It was not immediately clear if the two incidents were linked, or if the two posts were the same.
On Thursday, a Cabinet minister was killed in an attack at Kabul's airport. Karzai blamed a conspiracy within his own government. On Friday, more than 50 people were hurt in a club-swinging melee outside a soccer match organized by the peacekeepers.
At Saturday's funeral for Abdul Rahman, the slain minister of aviation and tourism, Karzai called for an end to "the culture of the knife and the gun" in Afghanistan (news - web sites).
"With God's help in the future, no one will do these kinds of things any more," a somber Karzai told the crowd of several thousand people gathered in the muddy cemetery.
The dead man's brother, Naser, appealed to Karzai: "Please capture the people who did this."
Details were scarce on the shooting early Saturday involving the peacekeepers. British Col. Richard Barrons, the peacekeepers' chief of staff, did not say what time his men's observation post was fired on, or in what part of the capital the incident occurred.
Barrons reported no injuries among the British soldiers, and said they were "extracted" after returning fire.
He also gave no details on the dead person, who he said was found by a joint patrol of peacekeepers and Afghan police in a nearby house along with five injured people. A car damaged by gunfire was also found.
Barrons said the injured were hospitalized, and that their injuries did not come from gunfire.
Kabul resident Masrolah Yaqeibi said he and four others were fired on as they borrowed a neighbor's car to take a pregnant woman to the maternity hospital.
"We wanted to move the car ... and then they started shooting at us," he told Associated Press Television News. "Due to that, one boy died and three others were injured. We don't have any weapons — we are civilians."
A neighbor, Karim Ehaeuri, said he was awakened by shooting and the sound of women and children crying.
"I came at 8 o'clock in the morning and I saw blood," he said, adding that he saw Western troops in the area.
An observation post atop a building that neighbors said was used by peacekeepers was visible from the street. It appeared to be vacant when APTN spoke to witnesses Saturday evening.
Asked about the report of civilians who were shot at, Jonathan Turner, a spokesman for the security force, said he had no further details on the dead person found in the area. He underlined that British troops opened fire "because they were fired at first."
"They certainly would not have opened fire first," he said. "There was definitely fire directed at their position."
The investigation was also continuing into the death of Rahman, the Interior Ministry said, but no new arrests were made Saturday. Three men were in custody and three high-ranking government officials who apparently escaped to Saudi Arabia were being sought.
However, Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef said the kingdom had not received any official request from Afghanistan to apprehend the three, the official Saudi Press Agency reported. He also said authorities checking identification at the border hadn't come across anyone with the names of the suspects.
"When we come to it, we will see," he said.
The three men believed to have left for Saudi Arabia were identified as Gen. Abdullah Jan Tawhidi, the deputy intelligence chief; Gen. Kalandar Beg, a Defense Ministry official; and a Justice Ministry official identified only as Halim.
Witnesses and official accounts initially said Muslim pilgrims stormed Rahman's plane, furious he was intending to use Ariana's sole Boeing 727 for an official trip to New Delhi while they waited for flights to Saudi Arabia for the annual hajj pilgrimage to Mecca.
But Karzai said the killing had "nothing to do" with the pilgrims, and that the conspirators killed Rahman because of a years-old factional feud. He did not make clear, however, whether the alleged plotters stirred up the crowd to kill him or used the melee as a cover for their own attack.
International peacekeepers, who were less than a quarter-mile away at the time of Rahman's killing, reported Saturday that a group of between 30 and 50 "troublemakers" — dressed differently than those embarking on the pilgrimage — had beaten the president of Ariana Airlines about an hour before the fatal confrontation.
The airline president, Rahullah Aman, was rescued by peacekeepers when he ran toward the military part of the airport, which they control. But peacekeeping officials said no one from the security force had witnessed the minister's killing, and that the peacekeepers had not been asked to intervene to protect him.
The brutal slaying and the casting of blame on a faction within the Karzai government raised fears over the interim administration's ability to keep public order in post-Taliban Afghanistan — and to keep internal rivalries from tearing apart the new leadership.
Thwarted plans for the pilgrimage sparked anger in southern city of Kandahar, where restive crowds milled outside banks Saturday to get back money they had paid for travel to Saudi Arabia. Authorities said the city's bomb-damaged airport was not ready to take large passenger planes, although it is used by the U.S.-led military coalition.
Some 5,000 people paid local authorities $1,600 each for a "hajj package," said Yusuf Pashtun, a spokesman for the Kandahar provincial government. He promised full refunds.
In other developments:
_More than 100 peacekeepers from Turkey arrived Saturday, the first soldiers from a Muslim country to join the international security patrols in Kabul.
_Taliban officials greatly inflated the number of people living in Afghanistan's largest camp for displaced people, the International Organization for Migration said. The population of the Maslakh camp, near the western city of Herat, is 118,000, the organization said. Until now, aid agencies have supplied aid based on a figure of 324,000.
_ An Australian soldier fighting with the U.S.-led coalition was killed in a land mine explosion, the Australian government said Sunday. The soldier, who was not identified, died Saturday when his patrol vehicle rode over the mine. He was part of a regiment seeking out and observing weapons dumps left by retreating Taliban and al-Qaida fighters. Australia has committed 1,550 military personnel to the war.
By Sayed Salahuddin
KABUL (Reuters) - Assassinated Afghan minister Abdul Rahman was buried on Saturday as fresh violence in the capital raised new fears about the country's fragile security, and new intelligence emerged on the whereabouts of fugitive Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.
Several hundred troops, their rifles fitted with bayonets, escorted the coffin carrying the body of the interim government's air transport and tourism minister, whose killing the country's leadership said was plotted by senior government officials.
Interim leader Hamid Karzai, who led a somber funeral procession, said: "This event again proves that we need to save ourselves from the oppression of the gun and the force of the knife."
The murder, an attack on international peacekeepers on Saturday and chaos outside a soccer match in Kabul on Friday, underscored the problems facing Afghanistan's U.N.-backed interim government as it struggles to reconcile rival factions and rebuild a volatile nation recovering from years of war.
The interim government took power in December after an American-led military campaign succeeded in overthrowing the hard-line Islamic Taliban regime that harbored the al Qaeda militant network of Osama bin Laden, blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks on America.
A Kandahar government official said on Saturday Mullah Omar was believed to be holed up in a remote mountainous region in central Afghanistan.
"We have had certain indications," Engineer Mohammad Yusuf Pashtoon, a senior aide to Kandahar Governor Gul Agha Sherzai, told reporters. "He is still in the same place. We believe he is in the northwestern part of Uruzgan."
The search for Mullah Omar and bin Laden, accused of masterminding the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, is the main piece of unfinished business for the U.S. and Afghan forces that routed the Taliban.
Mullah Omar escaped Kandahar in December before the city fell, but finding him in Uruzgan, a region of rugged mountains and few roads, is no easy task.
"There are major problems. One problem is communications. Also, the terrain and weather are making our efforts more difficult," Pashtoon said.
He said the Afghan authorities were relying on local intelligence to track Mullah Omar, and that, to his knowledge, no U.S. forces were in Uruzgan to hunt for the reclusive, one-eyed Taliban leader.
In the capital, Kabul, an observation post of the International Security Assistance Force manned by British soldiers came under fire from unidentified gunmen early on Saturday.
The British paratroopers returned fire and the gunmen sped away in a vehicle, international security force chief of staff Col. Richard Barons told reporters. No paratroopers were wounded and they evacuated the post.
The attack was the first against the 17-nation force of around 4,000 deployed in late December to help maintain security in Kabul. The first contingent of Turkish troops arrived on Saturday to join the force.
AID WORKERS SHOT, KIDNAPPED
In the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, one aid worker has been wounded by gunmen and another may have been kidnapped as armed bands undermine security.
Aid officials said a senior Afghan employee of the U.N. children's agency UNICEF was shot and wounded on Saturday in a struggle with gunmen who burst into his house and tried to kidnap him.
Another Afghan official with British aid group FOCUS was missing, believed kidnapped on Thursday while walking to work.
Old tribal and ethnic rivalries have resurfaced and exploded in bloodshed in some places while aid agencies warn that a rising tide of crime is threatening their efforts to help the war-shattered country's millions of destitute.
Three government officials are suspected of involvement in the death of Rahman, the aviation minister who was once a senior figure in the Northern Alliance which now dominates the interim government, but who later switched his allegiance to Afghanistan's former king, Zahir Shah.
The government did not say how Rahman was killed but earlier reports and witnesses said he was pulled off an airliner and beaten to death by a mob -- at first thought to be Muslim pilgrims angry at being unable to make a pilgrimage to Mecca.
"This tragic incident was the result of a personal vendetta and private hostilities of a group of people. It has no political roots," Information Minister Raheen Makhdoom said.
However, others described the killing as a warning to supporters of the ex-king.
Makhdoom said the three officials suspected of involvement in the killing flew to Saudi Arabia late on Thursday on a plane taking people to perform the haj.
He identified the three as the head of political affairs of the national security department, Gen. Abdullah Jan Tawhidi, deputy defense minister for technical affairs, Gen. Qalandar Beg and an attorney called Halim.
The U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, told U.S. television Saudi Arabia had agreed to return the suspects. But an official in Karzai's office said Saturday that Riyadh had yet to reply. And the Gulf kingdom itself said it had not received an official request for their extradition.
BUSH WARNS "DANGEROUS REGIMES"
In Karachi, Pakistani police said they had raided several houses and detained at least four more people but were no closer to finding kidnapped U.S. reporter Daniel Pearl, missing for more than three weeks.
Suspected Muslim rebels bombed a market and threw a grenade into a cinema in the southern Philippines on Saturday, killing four civilians and injuring dozens more as the United States stepped up its military buildup.
Local officers said the Abu Sayyaf guerrillas, believed to be linked to bin Laden and the target of the six-month-long U.S.-Philippine maneuvers, could be responsible.
At an air base 4 miles (6 km) away from Zamboanga where the attacks took place, U.S. special forces troops were landing at the start of their deployment, Washington's biggest expansion of the war against terror after the campaign in Afghanistan.
President Bush left Washington on Saturday for a trip to Japan, South Korea and China likely to be dominated by his branding of North Korea, Iran and Iraq as an "axis of evil" seeking to acquire weapons of mass destruction.
Before leaving, he said, "...I will remind the world that America will not allow North Korea and other dangerous regimes to threaten freedom with weapons of mass destruction."
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein said his country did not intend to acquire weapons of mass destruction.
"...weapons are important to defend the country against ambitions of foreigners and elements of evil, but your country is not interested in acquiring weapons of mass destruction," Saddam was quoted by the official Iraqi News Agency as saying.
Bush has repeatedly warned Saddam that his country would face the consequences if he does not allow U.N. weapons inspectors to return.
By Andrew Marshall
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Fugitive Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar is holed up in a remote mountainous region in central Afghanistan (news - web sites), a Kandahar government official said on Saturday.
"We have had certain indications," Engineer Mohammad Yusuf Pashtoon, a senior aide to Kandahar Governor Gul Agha Sherzai, told reporters. "He is still in the same place. We believe he is in the northwestern part of Uruzgan."
Mullah Omar escaped Kandahar in December before the city fell, and Afghanistan's new interim government is trying to track him down. But finding him in Uruzgan, a region of rugged mountains and few roads, is no easy task.
"There are major problems. One problem is communications. Also, the terrain and weather are making our efforts more difficult," Pashtoon said.
He said the Afghan authorities were relying on local intelligence to track Mullah Omar, and that, to his knowledge, no U.S. forces were in Uruzgan to hunt for the reclusive, one-eyed Taliban leader.
The search for Mullah Omar, and for his "guest" Osama bin Laden (news - web sites), accused of masterminding the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon (news - web sites), is the main piece of unfinished business for the U.S. and Afghan forces that routed the Taliban.
TOP TALIBAN IN SURRENDER TALKS
Kandahar government officials said last week that more than 15 senior Taliban leaders were in talks on their possible surrender. Taliban Foreign Minister Mullah Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil gave himself up earlier this month and is being questioned by U.S. forces in Kandahar.
Pashtoon said negotiations with other senior Taliban figures were still under way.
"Nobody else has surfaced yet," he said. "But we have assured them they will be treated justly if they surrender."
Kandahar officials hope the surrender of more senior Taliban leaders would provide valuable intelligence on the whereabouts of Mullah Omar and bin Laden.
Muttawakil was a valuable prize -- originally a student taught by Mullah Omar, he won the Taliban leader's trust and became his driver, food taster and translator before being appointed the hardline regime's official spokesman and then foreign minister.
But security sources in Kandahar say Muttawakil, considered one of the Taliban's more moderate members, broke with Mullah Omar in late 2001 due to a disagreement over the Taliban's refusal to hand over bin Laden and his al Qaeda allies.
This means Muttawakil is less likely to have up-to-date information on Mullah Omar's whereabouts, security sources say.
They say other Taliban leaders will be watching the treatment Muttawakil receives before deciding whether to give themselves up. According to sources in Kandahar, Muttawakil has been moved from the U.S. base at the city's airport to a more comfortable location in Kandahar for questioning.
The Kandahar government says that if he co-operates with U.S. questioning, Muttawakil will then be handed over to the Afghan authorities, who will grant him an amnesty as long as he is not guilty of any atrocities.
KABUL (Reuters) - Afghan security services have found a videotape related to Osama bin Laden in a province south of the capital, state-run Kabul Radio reported on Saturday.
The radio station said security services of the interim administration had found the tape among an arms cache in mountainous Logar province. It gave no details of what the videotape contained.
Kabul Radio said a rocket launcher, light machine guns, a mortar launcher, a BM-12 multiple rocket launcher, ammunition and 12 Toyota Corolla cars were found at the same site.
Bin Laden and his al Qaeda guerrilla network are accused by Washington of masterminding September 11's attacks in the United States.
A U.S. air campaign toppled the Taliban regime which harbored bin Laden, but U.S. forces have so far failed to capture the Saudi-born militant.
By Stuart Grudgings
MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan (Reuters) - One aid worker has been wounded by gunmen and another may have been kidnapped in Mazar-i-Sharif as armed bands undermine security in the northern Afghan city, aid officials said on Saturday.
A senior Afghan employee of the U.N. children's agency UNICEF was shot and wounded in a struggle with gunmen who burst into his house on Saturday and tried to kidnap him, they said.
Another Afghan official with British aid group FOCUS was missing and believed to have been kidnapped on Thursday while walking to work, colleagues at the agency said.
Mazar-i-Sharif, close to the old Soviet frontier, was much contested by the now defeated Taliban and their local northern enemies. The upsurge in crime there has come in spite of the deployment last week of a special U.N.-backed police force.
The deployment followed an effort to drive armed men out of town and calm festering tensions between rival factions.
"It was a warning to all of us," said Eric Laroche, UNICEF head for Afghanistan (news - web sites), who flew to the city from Pakistan on Saturday after hearing of the most recent attack. "There's undoubtedly an increased prevalence of insecurity in the city."
U.N. officials said they planned to meet local security chiefs on Sunday and would urge them to do more to ensure that armed men -- many of whom have yet to be demobilized following the war -- are kept under control.
SHOT FOUR TIMES
A doctor at a hospital run by the Jordanian armed forces in the city said the UNICEF official had been shot four times in the leg but was now in a stable condition.
Officials at FOCUS said their Afghan program chief had gone missing while walking his usual route to work from his house and that other kidnappings of wealthy people had taken place in the same area in recent weeks.
"We have informed the police but they have done nothing yet," said one official from the agency, adding that they had also informed U.S. forces stationed in the area.
Local residents said that while kidnappings were rare under the austere Taliban rule, they had been more common previously when those same factions now back in power had been in control.
Since driving the Taliban out of the city in November under the banner of the Northern Alliance, old divisions between the mainly ethnically based parties have reappeared, threatening to damage the credibility of interim leader Hamid Karzai's new interim government in the capital Kabul.
Under a U.N.-backed agreement, all three main parties have contributed men to a 600-strong neutral police force. But armed fighters from the factions still roam the city.
Many of the armed men have little to live on apart from the odd handout from their commanders and residents have complained of extortion and harassment under the barrels of their AK-47s.
In another incident in the past week, an Afghan bus driver working for the British charity Save the Children was beaten and robbed as he drove women and children from a clinic.
The driver said the three gunmen would have shot him without the women's intervention. They still beat him up and stole the bus: "They said that I was working for non-Muslims," said the driver, Parvaiz Azizi.
Although the Taliban came to be hated for their imposition of a strict Islamic code, many residents had welcomed them at first for bringing a reduction in crime and improving safety.
"We didn't like the Taliban but it was safer," said local businessman Haji Shah Zada.
"Now I fear that when the U.S. troops go home the commanders will start fighting again and things will get even worse."
By Andrew Marshall
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Problems which prevented thousands of furious southern Afghans from making the annual Haj pilgrimage to Mecca from Kandahar were not the fault of the United States, Kandahar's government said on Saturday.
More than 5,000 pilgrims who had gathered in Kandahar in the hope of boarding a plane to Saudi Arabia to perform the Haj were told on Friday that no planes would leave from the city's airport, which is under the control of U.S. forces.
The row has fueled the hostility felt by many of southern Afghanistan's ethnic Pashtuns toward the U.S. forces camped at the airport and the interim Afghan government in Kabul. Pilgrims have angrily denounced the United States and demanded action.
But Engineer Mohammad Yusuf Pashtoon, a senior aide to Kandahar Governor Gul Agha, said damage to the airport's runway meant it could not be used by large passenger planes.
"I don't think there are any objections toward the U.S. people. The runway is under repair, and big aircraft cannot land at the airport. They thought they could finish it in time, but it was not possible," he told reporters.
"Flights from Kandahar were never promised. It was wishful thinking on the part of all of us that we could possibly activate Kandahar airport in time."
He said that although U.S. military planes were able to use the runway, damage to part of it meant it was not long enough for use by large passenger planes.
Thousands of pilgrims from across southern Afghanistan are still camped in a dusty enclosure outside the Haj office on the outskirts of Kandahar, waiting to get back their passports and the $1,750 each had deposited.
Some restaurants in the city have run short of food due to the influx of pilgrims.
The Haj office had sent the passports of 5,214 people to Kabul for approval to make the pilgrimage, arranged vaccinations and guides, and even struck a deal with a local bath house to allow pilgrims to ritually bathe before making their journey.
But for the first time in decades, no pilgrims will leave for the Haj from Kandahar airport.
"I'm unhappy that we have not handled this whole situation properly," Pashtoon said. "Now there have been many allegations that we have gone against all basic Islamic traditions. But it was just not possible to fly from Kandahar."
The Afghan interim minister for air transport and tourism, Abdul Rahman, was beaten to death on Thursday by what was first thought to be an enraged mob of Haj pilgrims stuck at Kabul airport.
Afghan leader Hamid Karzai later said Rahman had been assassinated by people who included senior security officials.
More than a million Muslims flock to Saudi Arabia every year for the Haj pilgrimage, which Islamic scriptures urge every able-bodied adult Muslim who can afford it to perform at least once.
KABUL (Reuters) - The first contingent of Turkish troops arrived in the Afghan capital on Saturday to join the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) tasked with maintaining security in Kabul.
Around 50 troops arrived at Kabul airport on Saturday. The remainder of its pledged 260-strong contingent is expected to fly in over the next few days.
Muslim Turkey has signaled a willingness to lead the 17-nation ISAF force after fellow NATO member Britain's three-month command is over.
The peacekeeping force backs the interim government in Kabul after U.S.-aided opposition forces overthrew the ruling Taliban.
Turkish military officials were not immediately available to provide further details of the initial deployment, but press reports said Turkey would complete its deployment within five days.
Ankara, eager to have a say in the future of Afghanistan with which it shares historic and ethnic ties, has offered Kabul aid and training to help form a national army and police force.
Turkish troops have decades of experience fighting Kurdish rebels in the country's mountainous southeast. They have also operated in Somalia and the Balkans.
Turkey also hopes its firms can secure contracts for the reconstruction of roads and other infrastructure in the shattered Central Asian country.
But in a sign of possible difficulties ahead, an observation post manned by British paratroopers came under fire from unidentified gunmen early on Saturday, the first attack on ISAF troops since they were deployed in late December.
ISAF officials said the paratroopers returned fire and evacuated the post unhurt.
Later an ISAF investigation team returned to the area and found one man dead and five injured in a nearby house, said ISAF chief of staff Colonel Richard Barons.
The attack was the first against the around 4,000 ISAF troops deployed in late December.
By ESTES THOMPSON, Associated Press Writer
ASHEBORO, N.C. - Organizers in an effort to save the war-ravaged zoo in Kabul, Afghanistan (news - web sites), had hoped to raise enough money for temporary relief. They didn't count on an avalanche of generosity that has them planning to rebuild.
North Carolina Zoological Park director Dr. David Jones hoped his international connections could help raise $30,000, enough money to pay zoo staff six months of unpaid back wages and buy food and medicine for the animals.
But because of international news coverage and a battered celebrity lion named Marjan — who's since died — Jones and his colleagues have now raised $505,000, enough to rebuild the zoo and take care of other Afghan domestic animals.
"We were getting 300 phone calls a day," said Jones, who asked the private North Carolina Zoological Society to answer calls and establish bank accounts for the donations. "At no time were we promoting this."
One donor in Wisconsin sent $15 and a note — cosigned by her pet cat Claudia with a paw print. "Make sure the lion gets lots of meat," it said.
Another donation — a $5 bill — was credited to a cat named "Geoffroi."
"We've never seen an outpouring like that," said John Walsh, a director for the London-based World Society for the Protection of Animals, who went to the Kabul zoo last month to spend some donated money on rudimentary improvements.
The 100-acre zoo on the Kabul River was once one of the best in South Asia. But it crumbled during two decades of war and famine, and some 300 animals were killed during guerrilla fighting in the 1990s.
In November, The Associated Press reported on the plight of the animals. Publicity about the zoo centered on Marjan the elderly lion, his face disfigured by a grenade. He became an emblem of the zoo's plight until his death in January.
Coverage of the suffering animals spurred 5,250 donations so far, Jones said.
The largest single donation was $150,000 from an anonymous donor. The smallest were dollar bills from children. Fourth-graders at a U.S. Defense Department school in Misawa, Japan, raised $742 through a bake sale.
In all, through Feb. 13, the effort had raised $380,000 for the zoo and $125,000 for a domestic animal fund to help Afghans care for horses, donkeys, goats and cattle.
So far, $40,000 has been spent from the zoo fund and $30,000 from the domestic animal fund.
The money — worth ten times its face value in Afghanistan, where labor and building materials are cheap — will be used to clean up rubble from rocket and grenade explosions, restore water and electricity for the first time in years, and build new cages.
Jones said his next step is to find someone to head a rebuilding project. He plans to travel to Germany to talk to the builders who originally constructed the zoo.
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