Marxists fighting each other

Press, 14 June 1980, Page 8

Marxists fighting each other

NZPA-Reuter Islamabad; Rival factions of Afghan ; Marxists, bitterly at ■ odds) after two coups last year.: are fighting nightly gun-bat-1 tlses in the country’s princi-i pal provincial cities, accord-) ing to Western diplomats inKabul. | One faction, called the) Parcham (Flag), backs Presi-j dent Babrak Karmal, who: took power in the December; coup which was accom-l panied by the arrival in Af-j ghanistan of large Soviet t armed forces.- > | The other faction, the; Khalq (People), were suppor-i ters of President Hafizullahl Amin, who overthrew and] killed Afghanistan’s first: Marxist President, Noor Mo-! hammad Tarakki, last Sep-! tember and was in _ turn: overthrown and killed in the Soviet-backed coup last De-; cember. | According to Western diplomats in Kabul, whose reports reached NZPA-Reuter! in Pakistan this week, Kan-) dahar, in the south, Herat ini the north-west, and Mazar-i-Sharif, near the Soviet border in the north, have all witnessed nightly gunbattles between the two groups. Western diplomats in Kabul have also given eyewitness accounts of the’ collapse of about 100 schoolgirls in the grounds of a Kabul school this week.

| The description was the first independent account in a series of such episodes which have afflicted but apparently not seriously harmed hundreds of Kabul pupils in the past week. | Radio Kabul and the So-) viet news agency, Tass, have accused “reactionaries” of poisoning the pupils’ drinking water. Diplomats say that many Kabul residents believe the pupils are being poisoned bv Afghanistan’s Soviet-backed Government in retaliation for a wave of demonstrations by youngsters.

However, the pupils may in fact have been victims of a mild epidemic spread during summer heat by Kabul’s primitive sewerage system, the diplomats said. Travellers arriving in New Delhi from Afghanistan this week told of attacks on Sa-' viet soldiers in Kabul and) said that four had been' killed in the past few days, i One Afghan traveller said three Soviet soldiers were killed on Tuesday and one was stabbed to death last week.