72 Die as Afghan Guerrillas Bombard Kabul

Guerrilla groups bombarded Kabul with rockets and artillery Wednesday, killing more than 70 people and wounding hundreds in the fiercest fighting in two months.

More than 300 rockets and shells struck the Afghan capital in the two hours before dawn. The bombardment raged through the day, with government tanks racing down city streets to reinforce the main battlefront in the southwestern suburbs.

State-run Kabul Radio reported that at least 72 people had been killed and one military commander said bodies littered streets near the center of the fighting in the west.

The International Committee of the Red Cross reported that 576 injured people had been taken to hospitals.

It was the fiercest battle since the fractious guerrilla leaders of the Islamic coalition government signed a peace pact in Pakistan in March to end months of fighting.

Most of the rockets were fired from positions of the hard-line Hezb-i-Islami party led by Prime Minister-designate Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and its allies in hills to the south and west of Kabul.

The exact number of dead was unknown because most are usually buried rapidly.

Thousands of Kabul residents have been killed and more than one-third of the city’s 1.5 million inhabitants have fled since the rebels took power in April, 1992.

President Burhanuddin Rabbani and archrival Hekmatyar were in the eastern city of Jalalabad on Wednesday for a 12th day of talks to try to break a deadlock over formation of a Cabinet under the terms of the March peace pact.