Reinforcements Called In to Defend Kabul
Defense Minister Ahmed Shah Masoud has moved thousands of guerrillas to Kabul for a counterattack against a renegade fundamentalist chieftain besieging the capital, guerrilla officials said Tuesday.
Masoud, a commander of the Jamaat-i-Islami guerrilla group, called up several thousand reinforcements from his stronghold in northern Afghanistan, guerrillas in the Pakistani border town of Peshawar reported.
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, leader of the hard-line Hezb-i-Islami guerrilla faction, renewed his rocket attacks on Kabul on Tuesday, hours after issuing a call for peace, hitting the presidential palace and the French and Turkish embassies.
Casualties, if any, were not known.
Government jets retaliated with raids on the strategic Tapa Taj Bik hill, captured by Hekmatyar’s fighters after a night of street fighting Monday, the sources said.
They said that Masoud and President Burhanuddin Rabbani rejected an offer by Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, head of the formerly pro-Communist Uzbek militia, to fly in 10,000 reinforcements from northern bases around the town of Mazar-i-Sharif.
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