Afghanistan Accuses Insurgents of Downing Airliner With U.S. Missile, Killing 52

Afghan rebels using a U.S.-made missile shot down an Afghan civilian airliner, killing all 52 people on board, Kabul radio said Saturday.

The official radio of the Soviet-backed Afghan government said the Bakhtar Airlines plane was on a flight Wednesday from Kabul, the capital, to Farah province in the west, with a stop at Kandahar, 300 miles southwest of Kabul.

It said the plane was hit as it climbed after takeoff from Kandahar, and crashed, killing the 47 passengers and five crew members. It did not specify the type of plane, but the small domestic airline operates half a dozen Soviet-built propeller planes on internal routes.

The announcement accused the United States of being responsible for the attack and sharply denounced Washington.

“The plane was shot down with surface-to-air American-made rockets,” the radio said. “This shows the American government’s terrorist acts.”

The radio did not explain how authorities knew the missiles were made in the United States.

Afghanistan has reported guerrilla attacks on its airliners in the past. The Kabul government said an Ariana Airlines DC-10 jetliner with 308 people aboard was hit by a guerrilla missile Sept. 21, 1984. The plane, which was also taking off from Kandahar, managed to make an emergency landing at Kabul, with no casualties, the government said.

Afghan guerrilla groups based in Pakistan said they knew nothing of the latest report and did not know if an airliner had been shot down at Kandahar.

Earlier Saturday, Hezbi-i-Islami, one of the main anti-Marxist, Islamic guerrilla groups, issued a statement saying its forces had shot down a Soviet military transport plane taking off from Kandahar airport Aug. 28, a week before the incident reported by Kabul radio. The plane was shot down with a missile and the entire Soviet crew was killed, the statement said.

A Hezbi-i-Islami spokesman said he could not comment on whether the incident reported by his organization could be the same as that reported by Kabul radio.

Soviet military forces intervened in neighboring Afghanistan at the end of 1979, overseeing the ouster of a Marxist government in Kabul and the installation of another Marxist government more acceptable to Moscow. An estimated 115,000 Soviet troops are helping the Kabul government of President Babrak Karmal in its fight against Muslim guerrillas.

The Afghan broadcast said that the United States armed and trained the guerrillas and is the power behind their war against the Afghan government.

“The atheist bandits, the wage earners of the United States of America and Pakistan, once again have committed another inexcusable crime,” the broadcast said. It said the reported attack with an American-made missile is proof that the U.S. government is behind the guerrillas.

The U.S. government officially refuses to say if it gives weapons and other supplies to the guerrillas. Guerrilla leaders acknowledge privately that they do receive such aid.

Kandahar has been the scene of some of the worst fighting of the war, and much of the city has been badly damaged. The city’s airport is held by Soviet and Afghan government forces and used as a military air base.

Afghan refugee sources in Islamabad suggested that the plane reportedly shot down at Kandahar might have been a military transport or carrying government officials because airline service has been severely disrupted by the war.