A spokesman for the former Afghan defence minister, Gen Ahmad Shah Masood, yesterday denied that his opposition forces were responsible for a series of deadly rocket attacks on residential areas of Kabul.
The spokesman said the Taliban Islamic militia, which controls Kabul, carried out the attacks to blacken the name of the opposition. Speaking from Gen Masood's stronghold in the north-eastern Panjsher valley, the spokesman said the only missiles his forces launched were two "ordinary rockets" against the airport area on Sunday.
Five heavy missiles hit residential areas of the Afghan capital on Sunday and yesterday killing at least 73 civilians and wounding another 241. The Taliban has accused Gen Masood's forces of carrying out the attacks.
"We did not fire any rocket today (Monday). The Taliban fired these rockets in consultation with the Pakistanis in order to defame us when the issue of Afghanistan is being discussed internationally," Gen Masood's spokesman said. Foreign ministers of Pakistan, Iran, China, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, plus Russia and the United States, discussed the situation in Afghanistan at a UN-sponsored conference in New York yesterday.
Local residents and Taliban soldiers said the heavy rockets that hit residential areas in Kabul in the past two days were short-range Russian made Luna missiles fired by Masood troops positioned 15 miles north of Kabul.
However, the Masood spokesman said the Taliban had captured Luna missiles from the Kayan valley in northern Afghanistan and also had these missiles in their arsenal in the eastern city of Jalalabad.
The attacks were the deadliest since the Taliban ousted the government of former president Burhanuddin Rabbani and his military strongman, Gen Masood, from Kabul two years ago.
Official sources said seven people were killed and 26 wounded yesterday, while 66 died and 215 were injured in the Luna missile strikes on Kabul on Sunday. The Taliban-controlled Radio Shariat said the rockets landed in the most densely populated northern Kabul district of Khair Khana.
Rescue workers put the toll at 10 dead and another 10 wounded in the attack that razed one house and partially destroyed four others.
The station also added that Taliban jets carried out retaliatory strikes against Masood supporters in the Panjsher valley, inflicting heavy losses. Gen Masood's spokesman confirmed the Taliban jet attack, but said there were no casualties.
Ambulances of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) rushed the injured to hospitals. No other international organisation is in Kabul after most aid agencies withdrew in protest at Taliban restrictions.
In New York yesterday, Iran called on the UN Security Council to send a mission to Afghanistan to stop "mass killings" by Taliban fighters and secure the release of Iranians.
In a letter to the Security Council, Iranian ambassador, Mr Hadi Nejad-Hosseinian, said that the adoption by the council of "effective measures" could hopefully avert the threat of a military conflict between Iran and the Taliban.
He expressed serious concern about "the general situation" in Afghanistan, and particularly the fate of detained Iranian nationals, and reported massacres of religious opponents.
He urged the Security Council to "urgently adopt effective measures", including the dispatch of a mission, to "stop mass killings of civilians in northern Afghanistan, [and] secure the release of Iranian nationals held captive in Afghanistan".
Major powers meeting at the United Nations agreed yesterday to send an international reported massacres and mass graves in northern Afghanistan and to launch a new peace initiative.