Weeklong Afghan Rebel Push Described

Afghan guerrillas exploded bombs, launched rocket attacks on Kabul and ambushed Soviet convoys to mark the fifth anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Western diplomats said Monday.

The Muslim guerrillas also killed 17 Soviet troops and 436 soldiers of the Soviet-backed Afghan army in fighting in the strategic Panjshir Valley during December, said the diplomats, who spoke at a news conference on the condition that they remain unidentified.

During the week that included the Dec. 25 anniversary of the Soviet invasion in 1979, the guerrillas launched repeated rocket attacks in the heart of Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital.

The guerrillas are fighting to oust an estimated 100,000 Soviet troops who invaded Afghanistan to support a Soviet-installed Marxist government in Kabul.

Quoting reports from Kabul, the diplomats said rockets fell on central areas of the city through much of the week. A Christmas Day rocket barrage caused “large secondary explosions,” and more attacks the next day caused another explosion and fire near a mosque in the city, one diplomat said.

Soviet-built helicopters fired flares to locate the attackers, he said. The rocket attacks continued for another two days in what the diplomat called a “significant increase in the normal level of attacks.”

In fighting near the Soviet border the week before, the rebels hit two Soviet truck convoys, destroying 14 trucks on the main Soviet supply line.

A bomb explosion ripped through a hotel in the city of Mazar-i-Sharif near the supply route, killing or injuring 50 people and destroying the hotel, the diplomats said.

There was also “serious fighting” in the Panjshir Valley, the diplomats said. The Panjshir Valley is a guerrilla stronghold north of Kabul that also is a chief supply line north to the Soviet border.