60 villages attacked in reprisal raids—reports

Press, 16 July 1980, Page 8

60 villages attacked in reprisal raids —reports

NZPA-Reuter New Delhi Soviet troops in Afghanistan had attacked up to 60 villages during the last two weeks in an apparent change of the tactics being used against Afghan antiGovernment insurgents, diplomatic sources said yesterday. They quoted eyewitnesses to '• some of the raids, which they said were launched in retali- . ation for rebel attacks . against Soviet troops. Un- • confirmed reports cireulat- . ing among non-Communist i diplomats in Kabul spoke of thousands of casualties, ; the sources said. Soviet forces were con- ; ducting search-and-destroy activities rather than engaging .insurgents in protracted battles. Fewer troops * appeared . to be .involved than in earlier anti-guerrilla activity, but more air power was engaged: in the continuing attacks .against /Villages suspected of harbouring rebels, the sources Said. ■ v The sources and trav-

ellers arriving in New Delhi from Kabul said there had been a sharp increase during the last few days in arrivals of Soviet transport planes. They brought in troops, but mainly equipment. Some transports still came at night, but fourengined llyushin-76s had landed at Kabul Airport during daytime every two hours since last Thursday. Diplomatic sources said military;’/equipment was being transferred from the Ilyushins to smaller aircraft which immediately took off for unknown destinations. Some of the new equipment being sent to Afghanistan was lighter and more mobile than that seen in the country since the Soviet military intervention last December. The . sources said the equip m e n t included tracked vehicles which were a cross between tanks and armoured personnel carriers/

The Soviet Union said last month that it was pulling out 108 tanks and

several thousand troops from Afghanistan in a partial withdrawal of “non-essential” units. Western estimates put the number of Soviet troops in Afghanistan at 80,000 to 100,000. It was not known whether troops recently arrived in Kabul were reinforcements or replacements. “A lot of the new Soviet faces seem to be much older than those who' first appeared here and we have noticed some new berets among the Russian soldiers,” one traveller said. Diplomatic sources said Soviet forces were using Mil 24 helicopter gunships in their attacks against villages. They said 38 people, including 12 insurgents, were killed at Aab Darrah in Kabul Province on July I. Other villages in the province attacked three days later included ShenizGorbut, Lalander, Farzar, Tup Darrah, and Tangy-D-Sayden, according to the sources.

Another attack against a village in Ghazni Province, south-west of Kabul, left 60 insurgents killed or wounded and heavier casualties among civilians. One Western traveller said some Kabul-bound convoys had been held up as long as four days on the main highway from Ghazni to the capital because of firing. An American official in Washington said yesterday that Soviet troops had still to establish full control over Afghanistan, six months after their intervention.

Even though an estimated 120,000 Soviet troops were in Afghanistan, and they were close to the Soviet border, the Afghan resistance remained in control of most of the country outside the main cities and off the main roads.

The number of Afghan refugees outside the country had reached more than a million, with 850,000 in Pakistan and more than 100,000 in Iran, the official said.