Rebels Say 300 Died in Scud Attack by Afghan Government

Afghan rebels said Monday that a government Scud missile attack killed more than 300 people in this provincial capital in northeastern Afghanistan over the weekend, and the guerrillas planned swift revenge.

But the Soviet-backed government in Kabul rejected the charge that its forces fired three Soviet-made Scuds into Asadabad, capital of Kunar province, Saturday evening, blaming the incident on what it called an attack by one rebel group on another’s arsenals.

About 300 bodies were pulled from the rubble, but the toll could rise to 350 or 400, rebel provincial administration Interior Minister Rozi Khan said.

“We will soon take revenge for these martyrs; we are planning a big attack,” Rhozi Khan told reporters from neighboring Pakistan.

As he spoke, rescuers were still scouring the town and fighting fires more than 36 hours after the attack.

Observers said the death toll was high because many refugees were in Afghanistan for the spring planting season. Each year, many refugees cross the border to plant crops, return to camps in Pakistan for the summer and then go home for the fall harvest.

About 3.2 million refugees fled to Pakistan after the Soviet Union sent the Red Army into Afghanistan in 1979 to quash a Muslim insurgency. Another 2 million Afghans fled to Iran.

Kabul’s official Bakhtar news agency said the casualties were caused by rocket attacks on arsenals of the Wahabi Islamic group by followers of radical guerrilla leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

Bakhtar, monitored by the British Broadcasting Corp., said Gulbuddin’s men fired missiles and heavy weapons on a “big headquarters” housing hundreds of Wahabis, arms and ammunition depots and a huge fuel storage.

But guerrilla sources in Pakistan dismissed the Bakhtar report as mere propaganda.

More than 200 of several hundred wounded were moved to Pakistani hospitals in Peshawar, the base of guerrilla groups fighting the Kabul government.

Among those who died were three senior guerrilla field commanders as well as many other moujahedeen fighters, guerrilla official Hayatullah said by telephone from the Pakistani border town of Bajaur.

Asadabad had been largely left alone by the Kabul government since Soviet soldiers pulled out of Afghanistan in 1989.