Kabul | Wednesday
A SERIES of explosions rocked Afghanistan’s capital Kabul early on Wednesday but US officials swiftly denied they were retaliatory strikes for terror attacks in the United States.
An AFP reporter in the city heard seven or eight large blasts followed by what sounded like anti-aircraft fire and Taliban militia jets taking off from the main airport.
Flames could be seen over the low-rise skyline as multiple explosions and gunfire echoed around the war-ravaged city.
Taliban sources initially feared the blasts were US missile strikes in retaliation for the militia’s support for Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden, America’s most wanted terrorist.
The radical Islamic militia has denied that bin Laden, who lives in Afghanistan as its ”guest”, had been involved in the devastating terror attacks in New York and Washington on Tuesday.
But US officials said the explosions were not a retaliatory strike similar to missile attacks on bin Laden’s alleged terrorist camps in Afghanistan in 1998 following bombings at two US embassies in East Africa.
”We have no knowledge of who is responsible for the attacks in Afghanistan, but the United States is not,” said Scott McClellan, representative for US President George W Bush.
Afghanistan’s anti-Taliban opposition forces eventually claimed responsibility, after earlier toying with the militia by saying they were US strikes.
”We knew they were worried about American strikes so we decided to exploit the opportunity,” an opposition, said a commander on the frontlines north of the capital.
Speaking from the front some 25 kilometers north of Kabul, commander Besmillah said the attack was designed to avenge an assassination attempt against opposition military chief Ahmad Shah Masood.
‘We avenged the suicide assassination attempt on Masood and also the Taliban’s bombardment of civilian areas’
”Our helicopters went there for revenge. We avenged the suicide assassination attempt on Masood and also the Taliban’s bombardment of civilian areas,” he said.
Masood was seriously wounded in an assassination attempt in opposition-controlled territory of northern Afghanistan on Sunday.
Opposition officials have said two Arab men linked to the Taliban and bin Laden carried out the suicide bombing attack during a meeting at Masood’s office, but failed to kill the veteran commander.
The Taliban, or movement of ”Islamic students”, seized Kabul in 1996 and ousted then-defence minister Masood and president Burhanuddin Rabbani.
Masood now controls only a sliver of territory in the northeast as well as the strategic Panjshir valley northeast of Kabul, but he remains the last bulwark against the Taliban’s total control of the country.
Residents around the airport said they could recognise the explosions as rockets commonly used in the Afghan conflict.
”We don’t know anything but we saw some fire engines moving towards the airport and Taliban pickups have been coming and going since the rockets landed,” said a local shopkeeper.
Fighting broke out Tuesday morning some 25 kilometres north of Kabul as the Taliban tried to take advantage of the absence of Masood, whose whereabouts since the assassination bid are unknown. -Sapa-AFP