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Bomb
Goes Off At American Embassy In Kabul
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Boeing
helps Israel increasing its security!
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KABUL, Jan. 21 (News Agencies) - A bomb exploded outside the newly reopened U.S. embassy in Kabul in the first reported attack on the growing international presence in the city, news agencies reported.
United Nations personnel, diplomats, and aid workers have been warned that there could be an attack on a major installation in the Afghan capital in the days ahead, and a contingency plan has just been drawn up for the emergency evacuation of all U.N. staff from Afghanistan.
The bomb, an anti-personnel mine, exploded after dark outside the U.S. embassy last Thursday, a source, who was briefed on the incident the following day, told the British daily newspaper, the
Guardain. No one was hurt.
When U.S. guards went to inspect the damage outside the embassy the following morning, they discovered the area was booby-trapped with several more bombs.
Trip wires were connected to more anti-personnel mines around the American embassy and the headquarters for the British-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf), which is situated nearby. The booby-trap bombs were defused.
The bomb was the first known targeting of Americans or international forces establishing a growing presence in Kabul. But German troops newly arrived to join Isaf spent Sunday, January 20, digging ditches around their encampment after Berlin received intelligence warnings that they could be attacked by a suicide bomber driving a car packed with explosives.
Two U.S. marines died Sunday and five more were injured, two critically, when their helicopter crashed southeast of Kabul after taking off from Bagram airbase, the
Guardian reported.
Military spokesmen and U.S. defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, said there were no signs of hostile fire on the helicopter and that initial indications suggested mechanical failure.
But witnesses at the airport reported Sunday that helicopters and aircraft were now taking off using flares, the heat from which deflects heat-seeking missiles targeting the aircraft.
The flurry of warnings, the embassy bomb, and the helicopter crash have all contributed to an air of menace and insecurity in Kabul and beyond.
U.N. sources said that the security situation in the country had deteriorated in the past week. The Isaf patrols in the city, intended to boost security and confidence, are few and far between, barely visible on the streets.
It was not clear who was responsible for the embassy bomb. It was not necessarily being blamed on Taliban recalcitrants who would find it easy to infiltrate Kabul, although city police said Sunday that they had arrested five Taliban entering Kabul from the north.
Powerful anti-Taliban warlords outside Kabul, who feel they are being cut out of the western-supported post-Taliban dispensation, also have scores to settle, said the
Guardian.
The Americans are currently singling out Ismail Khan, the pro-Iranian fighter who runs western Afghanistan from his power base in Herat, for particular criticism.
U.N. sources claimed Iran was currently flying in arms and supplies to Khan, who has yet to declare his loyalty to the interim government headed by the pro-American Hamid Karzai.
U.S. aircraft have been bombing the Herat region over the past couple of weeks, ostensibly hitting targets staked out by Taliban or Al-Qaeda remnants, added the
Guardian. But Afghan government sources indicate the attacks are punitive strikes on Khan's forces because the warlord is refusing to follow orders from Kabul and will not disarm his forces.
An internal document from the medical charity Medécins Sans Frontières (MSF), written last week and obtained by the
Guardian, says that "a large number of civilian deaths and casualties" have been caused by recent U.S. cluster bomb attacks on the Herat region.
It reports local United Nations de-mining experts in Herat as saying that a "vast amount" of unexploded cluster bombs are lying around, not because they have failed to explode but because they have been designed not to explode, and to be used instead as anti-personnel mines. The bombs are particularly lethal to children.
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