Rebels Blast Kabul With Rockets, Kill 20, Tass Says

Afghan rebels blasted the capital city of Kabul with more than 20 rockets this morning, killing 20 people and wounding 34, Tass press agency reported from Afghanistan.

Tass said the “barbarous” 5:30 a.m. attack on residential areas of Kabul damaged many buildings, including a mosque.

(An Afghan guerrilla leader told a reporter in Islamabad, Pakistan, that he could not confirm the attack.

(In an interview from the border city of Peshawar, Abdul Haq claimed that Soviet and Afghan forces rocket residential areas of the capital to discredit guerrillas and destroy a burgeoning network of sympathizers.

(Haq said the guerrillas do not target civilian areas of the capital.)

Tass also said that villages in the provinces of Paktia, Paktika and Kunar were heavily bombarded by the insurgents Thursday, and that at least five people, including three children, were killed.

More than 150 civilians were reported killed last weekend when the anti-Marxist Muslim insurgents used artillery and rockets to shell populated areas in more than eight provinces.

On July 8, a car packed with explosives blew up near a downtown movie theater in the eastern city of Jalalabad, killing 31 people and badly injuring 33 others, Soviet and Afghan media said.

The Soviets, who sent troops into Afghanistan in December, 1979, to back the Marxist government in its war with the guerrillas, agreed in April to pull out their more than 100,000 soldiers over a 10-month period, beginning May 15. Half of the troops are to be out by August.

The Soviet withdrawal places the burden of warfare on the Afghan army, a force that many Western observers believe will be unable to withstand the guerrillas. Tass, however, said today that Afghan troops had staged several “successful operations” against the rebels.

It said the army wiped out an insurgent detachment of more than 20 fighters and captured three people who planned to commit “terrorist acts” near the southern city of Kandahar.