The UN demining agency in the Afghan city of Kandahar has been bombed and almost $1.5 million worth of equipment destroyed, the United Nations said today.
UN spokeswoman Ms Stephanie Bunker told a news briefing in Islamabad the UN Mine Action Programme complex was hit Monday night. There were no known casualties.
But it was not known how many bombs hit the complex or if it came from the intensive bombing carried out by US warplanes or from a missile fired from another source, said Ms Bunker.
Fighting has been raging around Kandahar, the headquarters of the Taliban, in recent days.
But considerable damage was caused, the spokeswoman emphasised.
Ms Bunker said four excavators, six buses, five trucks, and $300,000 worth of other equipment was destroyed.
"For the moment we only have verbal reports. We don't know if it was a bomb or a missile, but it was hit," she said.
UN de-mining experts have been working in Afghanistan for several years trying to clear mines laid during the 1979-89 Soviet occupation and artillery left from the civil war that followed.
Heavy US bombing on Thursday night and Friday destroyed the militia's foreign ministry building and a mosque and killed 11 civilians, the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press said earlier today.
AFP