Afghan Munitions Depot Explosion Leaves 19 Dead

Rockets, bullets and flaming munitions ripped through this dusty Afghan border town Friday after a large ammunition dump blew up, killing at least 19 people and injuring dozens of others. The local Afghan commander blamed a rocket attack for triggering the blast.

Fazaludin Agha, the local commander in Spin Buldak, 300 miles southwest of Kabul, the capital, said it was not known who fired the rocket that he said set off the initial explosion at the ammunition dump late Thursday. Secondary explosions continued into the early hours Friday.

The commander said the victims included women, children and Afghan soldiers. At least seven soldiers who had been guarding the munitions cache were missing.

Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Dave Lapan said no U.S. military forces were involved or in the area when the explosions occurred.

The weapons storehouse was used by the Taliban and was taken over by the U.S.-allied Afghan forces that ousted the Islamic regime. Afghan officials said they had planned to move the depot away from the residential area.

After the explosions subsided, rocket-propelled grenades, antiaircraft rounds and small-arms munitions lay strewn over a wide area of the town. Men with Kalashnikov rifles guarded the site.

“A mortar fell on my house,” said Abdul Ghaffar, a teenage soldier who stood guard outside the compound Friday. “It killed my mother and my brother.”

The most seriously wounded were taken to hospitals in Chaman, about three miles away on the Pakistani side of the border, and to the southern Afghan city of Kandahar.

Children and other people had earlier entered the compound looking for scrap metal they could sell.

The explosions blasted a local government customs house where food aid was stored. A nearby mosque and an office of the United Nations high commissioner for refugees also were damaged.