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Wounded Arab Fighter Blows Himself Up In Kandahar Hospital
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fighter chose death over arrest
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KANDAHAR, Jan. 8 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - One of the seven Arab fighters, wounded in a U.S. air raid on the airport and barricaded in a hospital ward in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, blew himself up Tuesday, a security official said.
The Arab, believed to be a member of Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network, committed suicide around 5:00 am (0030 GMT), after trying to flee the hospital and finding himself surrounded by guards, the official, Afizullah, told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The bloodied and mutilated body of the man, whose name was thought to be Mohammad Rasool, was left lying on the lawn outside the Mirwais hospital.
The corpse was of a young man, aged between 20 and 25 years, thin and dressed in traditional Afghan clothing. His left arm was wrapped in a large bandage, but the body was blackened and shredded by the explosion.
His nationality, and the identity of the six other fighters barricaded in the former women's section, are unknown to hospital authorities, who have been keeping watch over the month-long siege.
The Arabs, many of whom are believed to be from Yemen, arrived at the hospital in November after being wounded in a U.S. air raid on the airport that serves this southeastern city.
At that time, Kandahar was still under the Taliban rule. However, before the Taliban fled Kandahar December 7, 2001, the wounded Arabs were reportedly handed food and weapons so they could resist capture.
Afizullah, who oversaw security at the besieged ward, said the man tried to flee at dawn on Tuesday.
"He wanted to escape around five, he went out of the ward. We wanted to capture him alive, but as he was surrounded, he detonated explosives that he had strapped on himself," he told AFP.
Afizullah confirmed that the six other Arabs remained in the ward. "They are angry" over the death of their comrade, he added.
The body had been left in place so that journalists could see what had happened and ensure that the guards were not blamed, he said.
Under Muslim tradition, bodies are normally buried as quickly as possible. But Afizullah was not able to say where the Arab fighter would be buried.
Of the 12 suspected Al-Qaeda members admitted to the hospital in November, four escaped in December and another was arrested by forces of the governor of Kandahar province, Gul Agha.
Barricaded in the ward, surrounded by local militia fighters and armed with grenades, the Arabs had repeatedly threatened to blow themselves up if any arrest attempts were made.
An attempt at capturing them, launched 23 December by Gul Agha's men and backed by U.S. soldiers, failed. Since then, the fighters had banned anyone from seeing them, hospital authorities said.
The International Herald Tribune reported Monday that since the collapse of the Taliban government in Afghanistan, nearly 3,500 former Taliban fighters have been held in the city of Shibarghan in Afghanistan in a prison built for 800, under conditions that are raising alarm among international aid groups.
The prisoners are being interrogated by U.S. investigators, but their jailer is General Abdul Rashid Dostum, Afghanistan's new deputy Defense Minister and an Uzbek warlord whose reputation for brutality has been well documented over the last 20 years, the Tribune said.
Neither the Afghan authorities nor the U.S. forces have said what the prisoners' ultimate fate will be. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which has visited and registered prisoners in Shibarghan, first raised concerns about overcrowding and unsanitary conditions last month, after a prisoner fell sick and died in one of the cells, the paper said.
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