Rebel Rockets Hit Planes, Munitions at Kabul Airport

Afghan guerrillas attacked Kabul with rockets Thursday for the second time in a week, blowing up an airport ammunition depot, destroying airplanes and killing at least four people in the Afghan capital, Soviet sources and news reports said.

The attack came as Afghan warplanes bombed and strafed Pakistani villages, striking deeper inside that country than ever during the nine-year-old Afghan conflict, officials said. Hospital sources in Pakistan said at least one person was killed and 24 were injured.

Kabul firefighters worked into the night to battle a blaze at the ammunition depot, which was struck by at least one of 25 rockets that fell on the airport and other parts of the city, a Soviet official said.

“Many people were killed and wounded,” the Soviet source said, acknowledging that there had been casualties among Soviet troops stationed at the airport. He gave no casualty figures.

The state-run Bakhtar news agency said four people were killed, including a woman and a child, and nine others were injured by rockets striking a residential section of the city.

A Western diplomat said rockets also landed near the U.S. Embassy and the presidential palace, but there were no immediate reports of damage to either of those buildings.

The Soviet source said that the ammunition dump was one of many at the sprawling facility. “Some planes were damaged, others destroyed,” he said.

A European traveler who was at the airport’s civilian section when the 3:45 p.m. attack occurred said two rockets struck the Soviet base, one hitting the ammunition dump and the second setting ablaze a large store of tar used for paving the runway.

Flares, tracers and what appeared to be rockets soared into the sky, some exploding and cascading erratically toward the ground. The air was filled with the constant thud of explosions and an intense crackle of what sounded like the detonation of hundreds of thousands of bullets.

Soldiers and witnesses said the rockets were fired into the city from the east, the same area used by the rebels Saturday in unleashing another barrage at the airport that left five people dead and 32 wounded, including eight Soviet soldiers.

In Pakistan, the Foreign Ministry delivered a protest note to the Soviet ambassador in Islamabad over the attack by Afghan warplanes on Pakistani villages, officials said. The note said the attack was a violation of the April 14 Geneva accord on the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan.