http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45516-2003Jan26.html
Afghan intelligence officers said Sunday they had foiled a plan to launch rocket attacks on the U.S. Embassy, international peacekeepers and Kabul airport at the weekend. Engineer Amin, head of intelligence for Kabul, told Reuters his men had found 30 BM-21 rockets in the Tara Khail area near Bagrami on the eastern outskirts of Kabul Saturday morning. He said five were primed to fire while the rest lay ready nearby. He said a map found at the scene identified three targets -- the U.S. embassy, the headquarters of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) for Kabul and Kabul airport. All the locations would be within operational range of the BM-21, a rocket designed in the former Soviet Union. "The map pointed out the targets and the distance from the site," Amin said, adding that both Kabul police and Italian peacekeepers had inspected the site. "I think Hezb-e-Islami and al Qaeda are behind this," he added, referring to the party of renegade Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and the network of Saudi-born dissident Osama bin Laden. The latter is blamed for the September 11 attacks on the United States in 2001. ISAF ALSO FINDS ROCKETS Squadron Leader Mark Whitty, a spokesman for the 21-nation ISAF, said he did not have any information that would enable him to confirm or deny Amin's account. However, he said an ISAF patrol found 25 rockets on Saturday morning in an area about three km (two miles) from the airport, adjacent to the road leading out of Kabul toward the eastern city of Jalalabad. The location is several km (miles) from that given by Amin. Whitty told a news conference he had no information how the rockets came to be there, but said they had been taken to a compound of the government's National Directorate of Security. Another ISAF spokesman, Commander Tony Grubb, said he had no information that the weapons were primed to fire or posed an immediate threat and said such discoveries were not uncommon in Kabul, a battleground during factional fighting in the 1990s. Grubb also said ISAF was unaware of any specific security threats to Kabul in recent days. One of two Afghan intelligence officers who said they had found the rockets near Bagrami explained the attack plan appeared to have been well thought out. "They had planned it very well and even watered the spot around the rockets so they would not blow up dust and identify the firing position when they were launched. They also chose an area with escape routes all round," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity. The reports of the discovery of the weapons followed stepped up police activity in Kabul Saturday, in which officers stopped vehicles around the city to search for weapons. ISAF, which is responsible for assisting security in Kabul, said it had been told by police the checks were part of a pre-arranged security initiative aimed at finding illicit arms. Security in Kabul has apparently stabilized in recent months after a spate of incidents last year, including a car bombing in the city center on September 5 that killed at least 26 people and wounded 150. xponent Killers Maru rob ________________________________ You are a fluke of the universe. You have no right to be here. And whether you can hear it or not, the universe is laughing behind your back. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
