Soviet forces start big drive

Press, 14 June 1984, Page 11

Soviet forces start big drive

NZPA-Reuter Islamabad

Soviet forces have launched a big attack on Afghan guerrillas near the Iranian border, Western diplomats said yesterday.

The diplomats, quoting information from their missions in the Afghan capital, also reported increased guerrilla activity last week in Kabul and the eastern provinces of Paktia and Nangarhar bordering Pakistan.

No details were available of the offensive against the anti-Communist guerrillas in and around Herat, the capital of the western province of the same name.

fhe diplomats quoted an

unidentified Eastern European diplomat in Kabul with good Afghan military contacts as reporting that heavy fighting was continuing in the area.

Last week, the diplomats reported stepped-up guerrilla attacks in Herat, and the Iranian news agency Irna said Soviet bombardment had killed hundreds of Afghans and burned several villages around the city.

the diplomats also reported almost daily bombing raids around Afghanistan’s second largest city of Kandahar in the south.

As resistance activity picked up in Kabul last week with attacks on government, military and other

installations, a large number of Soviet heavy transport planes arrived at Kabul airport on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday with troops and armour. No figures were available, but the diplomats quoted an airport source as saying seven Ilyushin heavy transport planes unloaded a force estimated at brigade strength on Wednesday alone.

The diplomats said guerrilla operations in the Paktia province and along the highway between the Nangarhar province capital of Jalalabad and the Pakistani border post of Torkham appeared aimed at reducing pressure on rebels led by the Panjsher Valley guer-

rilla commander, Ahmad Shah Masood.

The strategic valley north of Kabul was overrun bySoviet forces in April when the Kabul Government announced that the “band” had been eliminated.

Meanwhile, a Briton who has recently returned to London, said Soviet forces in Afghanistan were abducting and indoctrinating children and returning them as spies to rebel strongholds.

Adam Holloway, aged 18, told the “Daily Express” newspaper that he had met one of the child spies, a boy named Naiem, aged 10. in a rebel base near Urgun. The boy said he had been taken from his parents a

year ago and flown with 200 other children to a Soviet town.

He was given a Soviet foster mother, lectured in Marxism, given firearms training and taught how to infiltrate rebel camps and direct Soviet bombers to their targets by lighting fires.

When he was returned to Afghanistan, he was taken in as an orphan at a rebel base.

Mr Holloway, who said he had spent a week inside Afghanistan “to do something different between school and university,” said rebel commanders had been debriefing the boy since discovering he was reporting to Russian Intelligence.