U.N. Aid Agencies Move Workers From Kabul : Afghanistan: Two weeks of rebel rocket attacks on capital leave more than 1,000 dead.

U.N. aid agencies have evacuated all but about half a dozen foreign employees from Kabul, where nearly two weeks of rocket attacks have left more than 1,000 people dead, sources said Sunday.

The United Nations thus became the first foreign agency to withdraw its forces from the capital since the latest wave of fighting broke out.

The U.N. refugee agency had announced from its headquarters in Geneva on Thursday that it was moving its staff of about 16 from the capital to the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif because of the fighting. The agency has five offices in Afghanistan--including Kabul and Mazar-i-Sharif--that minister to returning civil war refugees.

The evacuated workers left behind a battle-scarred capital that was pounded Sunday by hundreds of rockets launched by forces loyal to rebel chieftain Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Homes and businesses were destroyed, and the combined military and civilian airport--already closed to civilian flights because of the fighting--was damaged.

Muslim rebels had joined forces to dislodge Communist leaders during Afghanistan’s 14-year civil war, but they have been locked in a power struggle since they took over from Communist President Najibullah in April.

The latest outbreak of fighting has involved pro-government troops and Hekmatyar’s fundamentalist Hezb-i-Islami faction.

A dozen rockets fell around eastern Kabul’s foreign diplomatic enclave Sunday, hitting only the vacant Iraqi mission. Five rockets hit the Russian compound Saturday night, but no one was hurt.

About 20,000 Afghans, blocked earlier from leaving when the government closed the eastern route out of the city, fled Sunday morning after the government opened the road. They were headed for farms in the eastern countryside and neighboring Pakistan, diplomatic sources said, and joined thousands of others who already have fled the fighting in this capital of 1.5 million.

The U.N. workers left Kabul without fanfare Saturday morning in three vehicles, the sources said, on condition of anonymity. Agency officials would not disclose how many employees had left, but one said six or seven stayed behind. None of the Afghans working for the agency had been evacuated, sources said.

The U.N. staffers were expected to go overland to Mazar-i-Sharif, about 180 miles north of Kabul. Some may leave the country for Moscow or Pakistan, and others will stay in the north in preparation for a later return to Kabul, the U.N. sources said. They would not provide further details.

Agency staffers were evacuated two days after U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali renewed his appeal to Afghanistan’s 3-month-old Islamic government to safeguard the lives and property of foreigners in Kabul.

Rockets struck the Russian Embassy on Wednesday, and according to a revised report, two Russians, not one, were killed. Five more rockets crashed into the compound Saturday evening, but no one was hurt.

Russian and Italian missions were planning to evacuate “non-essential” staff members, and other embassies were considering following suit, diplomatic sources said.

The U.S. mission in Kabul was shut down in December, 1988, after Washington concluded that Najibullah’s government could not guarantee its safety.

Defense Ministry sources have said that at least 1,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in the violent exchanges between Hekmatyar’s forces and pro-government troops. But the death toll is considered conservative and does not include hundreds more killed less than two weeks ago in clashes in western Kabul between Sunni and Shiite militias.