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Gulf News Dubai:Sunday, April 14, 2002 Peacekeepers clash with police Kabul |Reuters | 14-04-2002 International peacekeepers clashed with a 30-strong group of armed men in Kabul and captured some wearing the new Afghan police uniform, a spokesman for multinational force said yesterday. General Deen Mohammed Joorat, the Interior Ministry security chief, said the seven men captured were members of the official security force and alleged their intention was to destabilise the interim Afghan administration. "Six of them belong to the police of the zone and the other one is from the 61st division of the armed forces. They are part of the government," he told Reuters. "They are under investigation. They pretended they were chasing a group of thieves, but the reality is that they wanted to sabotage the security situation in Kabul. That was for sure their intention," Joorat charged. International Assistance Security Force spokesman Lt. Col. Neal Peckham said the 18-nation force had worried the clash might have resulted from a security operation by the interim administration and it had not been told. The ISAF was upset earlier this month when the interim administration rounded up scores of people in Kabul to snuff out an alleged coup plot but did not tell the nearly 5,000-strong ISAF about it. Joorat said all seven captured men were Hazaras, a Shi'ite ethnic group which is a minority in largely Sunni Afghanistan. The clash occurred in an area of southwest Kabul which is largely populated by Hazaras. ISAF patrols have been fired on several times in the area while trying to halt the depredations of the armed gangs of robbers thought to be made up of unemployed fighters of the Northern Alliance who helped drive the Taliban from power. Peckham said two patrols of British soldiers from the Royal Anglian regiment were fired on during the night. "Some 10 rounds were fired, four at one location and six at another, and both of these patrols responded robustly with returning fire," he said. The ISAF swiftly sent reinforcements who arrested seven of the armed men but others escaped in a vehicle, he said. "The sum total of the operation is that we have detained seven men. All were armed with AK47s, five of them were in police uniforms, one in civilian clothes and one in combats." The ISAF handed the seven over to the Afghan Interior Ministry for investigation, Peckham said. "The size of the reported group is of significance," he said. "If indeed there were 30 men moving in the area, then that is of significant concern," the ISAF spokesman noted. The incident follows attempted rocket attacks on Kabul installations of the 18-nation ISAF, sent to provide security in the capital in the run-up to a Loya Jirga, a council of elders, in June to decide on a government. Two Chinese-made 107 mm rockets were fired at an ISAF installation earlier this month and four more, on primitive launchers and attached to wrist-watch timing devices, were discovered from were they were launched. The interim government says a number of people have been arrested in connection with the missiles. It says dozens of people were rounded up in the operation against the alleged coup plot blamed on former prime minister Gulbuddin Hikmatyar's fundamentalist Hezb-i-Islami group, which denies any involvement. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - online filing with TurboTax http://taxes.yahoo.com/ --------------------------- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^================================================================ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9617B Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
