Rebels caused Kabul blast, Moscow says

Press, 30 August 1986, Page 11

Rebels caused Kabul blast, Moscow says

NZPA-Reuter . Moscow

Muslim rebels had caused a huge explosion and fire near Kabul this week, in which several people were killed, Soviet television reported yesterday in contradiction to official Afghan statements on the incident.

The evening newscast carried film of a ball of fire and rockets exploding, closely matching eyewitness accounts from Kabul of a blast at an Afghan Army ammunition dump outside the capital on Tuesday night.

The official Soviet news media often mentions minor attacks by the rebels. But this report was a rare admission of the intensity and scale of their fight against the Moscow-backed Afghan Army.

Afghan officials in Kabul had said the dump explosion was caused by a “technical mistake” and that there were no casual-

ties. Western diplomats were not surprised that Kabul and Moscow appeared to be giving different versions of the same incident. The Soviet film showed flames rising above hills and spreading across the night sky. The crackle of exploding bullets and shells could also be heard.

The reporter on the spot made no mention of an arms dump in his account of what the television called the latest counter revolutionary atrocity, but he said shells and mines were going off and that nearby houses had caught fire.

He interviewed a man who said his home had been burnt down in the blaze. The man said “dushman (rebels) have committed another crime and peaceful people have died.”

Measures were being taken to put out the fire and save lives, the re-

porter said. He could see ambulances going to the scene. A Reuter correspondent, Tom Heneghan, reported from Kabul that residents had seen a “five-hour orgy of flames, thunder and flares.” They had told him a fireball more than 300 m high had risen into the sky when the dump blew up around midnight “It was like the pictures you see of an atomic bomb — a flash of light and a mushroom cloud rising above it” one man told him. Afghan officials and diplomats said the store, partly located underground, was near the base of the Afghan Army’s Bth Division, at Kargah, about 10km north-west of the city centre. The diplomats said it was believed to contain large Soviet-made SAM2 surface-to-air missiles, whose detonation could have caused the fireball.