Apr 9, 2002 5 min read

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) – A bomb exploded Monday near a convoy carrying Afghanistan’s defense minister, killing four bystanders and injuring 16 others in what officials said was another attempt to destabilize the interim government. Defense Minister Mohammed Fahim was not hurt when the bomb exploded in front of his convoy in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad, said Agha Jan, an aide to the region’s top military commander, Hazrat Ali.

Jan, who was in one of the vehicles, said the convoy itself was not hit and the victims were people lined up along the road to welcome Fahim.

Mir Ajan, a Defense Ministry official, called it an assassination attempt and said the perpetrators “were trying to destabilize the country and disrupt the minister’s plans” in Jalalabad.

Fahim planned to meet with local commanders and tribal leaders to discuss, among other issues, a government program launched Monday to eradicate illegal poppy crops, offering farmers about $500 an acre to destroy the crop that produces opium, the raw material for heroin.

Authorities said they will destroy the crops if farmers do not.

The attack followed the discovery by Afghan police of four Chinese-made rockets aimed at peacekeepers, a spokesman for the international force said earlier Monday.

The rockets were found Sunday at the site where two were fired at the security force hours earlier, Maj. Can Oz Tuaf said.

Peacekeepers suspect the attack, the first since security forces began patrolling Kabul last year, were part of an ongoing effort to destabilize the government ahead of the loya jirga, a national grand council meeting in June to select a new government.

Three of the four rockets discovered in the Afghan capital were “armed and ready to launch,” Tuaf said.

Peacekeepers said the attacks would not be allowed to destabilize the interim administration led by Hamid Karzai.

Flight Lt. Tony Marshall, another spokesman for the British-led International Security Assistance Force, said earlier that a 107 mm Chinese-made rocket exploded just yards from a camp housing German and Danish troops. But an initial investigation revealed the missile warhead did not explode.

The landing site of a second missile fired Sunday, also believed not to have detonated, has not yet been found, spokesmen said.

The launch site discovered by local police was about three miles southwest of where one missile landed, Marshall said. All the rockets were connected to a crude, wrist watch timer, and scorch marks at the site indicated two already had been fired, he said.

Afghan authorities last week arrested at least 160 people on suspicion of trying to destabilize the government and plot attacks against Karzai and the exiled former king, Mohammad Zaher Shah, whose homecoming is expected later this month.

Those still in custody are linked to a hard-line Islamic group, Hezb-e-Islami, headed by former Prime Minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, officials said. A group spokesman denied it was connected with the alleged plot.

Although this was the first rocket attack on peacekeepers, there have been several shooting incidents in recent weeks.

Previously, peacekeepers said they believed disgruntled and unpaid northern alliance soldiers or common criminals were behind some of the attacks. The 18-nation, 4,500-member force is responsible for maintaining security in Kabul.

In other developments Monday:

-Karzai plans to travel Tuesday to central Afghanistan, where a U.N. team found evidence over the weekend of at least three mass graves apparently filled with ethnic Hazaras killed during the Taliban’s final month, said Fridoon, an Interior Ministry spokesman.

Karzai’s office could not immediately be reached for comment.

The U.N. team visited the site in the central city of Bamiyan and spoke with local leaders Sunday before returning to Kabul, U.N. spokesman Manoel de Almeida e Silva said. There was no information on the number of people buried or the exact circumstances of their deaths, but they apparently were killed just before the fall of the Taliban, he said.

Satar, an Hazara activist contacted in Bamiyan, disputed the U.N. account, saying bodies found in three mass graves were those of people killed “between one and two years ago.” Another activist in Kabul, Mustafa, put the number of mass graves found there at “six or seven.”

There long have been reports of Taliban repression directed against the Hazara minority, which comprises about 10 percent of Afghanistan’s population. The Hazaras follow Islam’s Shiite branch, which dominates neighboring Iran and a few other places, but rivals the Sunni branch to which most Taliban belonged.

Hazara leaders claim as many as 15,000 of their people were killed in a religiously motivated slaughter orchestrated by the Taliban across the country.

-International troops searching the mountains and valleys in the Shah-e-kot area of eastern Afghanistan uncovered a large number of “significant documents,” a U.S. military spokesman Capt. Steve O’Connor said.

The U.S.-led patrols recovered the documents Sunday and were turning them over to analysts, O’Connor said.

He would not elaborate on where the documents were found or why they might be important, but said the soldiers who found them determined they were of “significant” intelligence value.