copied from http://frontierpost.com.pk/main.asp?id=2&date1=8/8/2002
15 killed in Kabul clash
Updated on 8/8/2002 2:45:08 PM
KABUL (Agencies): Attackers struck an Afghan army base on Wednesday in southern Kabul, and 15 people were killed, including 11 guerrillas, authorities reported.The base commander claimed the attackers were Arabs and Pakistanis, but that could not be confirmed.
It was the most serious battle in the capital in months, and came just a day after U.S. troops killed four men who reportedly opened fire on them in Kunar province, 90 miles to the northeast.
The two incidents, and another involving U.S. troops on Monday, represented an upsurge in violence during a relatively quiet period eight months after the fall of Afghanistan’s Taliban government.
The attack on the Kabul army garrison began about 7 a.m.
when the guerrillas, armed with AK-47 semiautomatic rifles, rushed the post in the Bagram-i District, about six miles south of the center of the capital, said the local police commander, Col.
Haji Rashid.
Soldiers fought back mainly with rocket-propelled grenades, he said.
The base commander, Bismullah Khan, told The Associated Press that in a three-hour battle his men pursued the attackers as they retreated to a nearby mountain, surrounded them and killed 11.
He said three of his men also were killed.
A wounded civilian died en route to a hospital, said Maj.
Angela Herbert, a spokeswoman for the International Security Assistance Force, the multinational force that patrols Kabul.
One guerrilla and four soldiers were wounded, the Afghan officials said.
The guerrillas apparently were trapped by the soldiers and shot against a steep lower slope of the mountain, where large bloodstains could later be seen after their bodies were taken away.
“They were Arabs and Pakistanis,” said Khan, the garrison commander, but he did not say how this had been determined.
Rashid, the police commander, said 20 soldiers and 20 police were involved in the fight.
He said the attackers “came from the south of Kabul, from the direction of the mountains and villages.” None of the U.S. troops in Afghanistan was known to have been involved in the Kabul battle, although unidentified Americans in civilian clothes were later seen inspecting the site.
On Tuesday, American troops patrolling in eastern Afghanistan’s Kunar province killed four men in an automobile who opened fire on them, said Col.
Roger King at Bagram, the U.S. military headquarters.
He said a fifth man in the car also was hit and wounded when the Americans returned fire.
King said the men were believed to be al-Qaida members, and a large amount of cash from a country in the region - which he did not identify was found in the car.
The provincial intelligence chief, Jan Shah, told the AP that the Americans opened fire on the car when it did not stop to be searched in the Shagai area, near the provincial capital, Asadabad.
He said the question of whether the men were armed was under investigation.
Another local leader, tribal chief Haji Rooh Ullah, told the AP that the four killed were Afghans and former Taliban.
He said they were all members of one family, relatives of the former Taliban provincial governor.
Shah, the intelligence official, said the men had not been actively opposing the new U.S.-supported government On Monday, U.S. troops patrolling the same area killed two men who were said to have fired on them from a hilltop.
“Part of the process of doing patrols like this is to attempt to flush out the enemy that may be operating in that area, and then eventually drive the enemy out of an area,” King said Wednesday.
“We view two days of contact as a success.” U.S. forces have been in Kunar province, which borders Pakistan, for more than a month.
King said recent attacks could be a combination of a change of tactics by the adversary and changes in the way the U.S. military is operating, putting more soldiers in the field and being more active in their patrols.
In Kabul, eight months after a U.S.-led military campaign ousted the Taliban government and scattered the al-Qaida terrorist network, the multinational ISAF contingent has generally maintained the peace in the capital.
But fighting has flared in outlying provinces between armed factions vying for power, and the central government has remained on guard against possible attacks by resurgent Taliban or al-Qaida units.
Last week, Afghan authorities reported intercepting a would-be car bomber in the heart of Kabul, before he could set off his half-ton of explosives.
He was said to have come from the region south of Kabul.
Although unidentified gunmen have occasionally fired briefly on patrols by the Kabul multinational force and other targets, the capital has been spared such pitched firefights - and heavy casualties - in the eight months since the Taliban fled from power.
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