Rocket cache found in southern Kabul

KABUL: The international peacekeeping force in Kabul said on Friday it had discovered a cache of rockets and other missiles in the south of the city.

The munitions were discovered by a patrol of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) on Thursday, ISAF spokesman Squadron Leader Terry Hay told a news briefing. He said the weapons were old and may have been dumped. He said they included three Chinese-made 107 mm rockets, a fuse, a mortar round and a 70 mm projectile.

The discovery came a day after the United Nations (UN) resumed flights to and from Kabul airport in the northeast of the city after a three-day suspension prompted by a security alert.

ISAF has not given the reasons for the alert that forced UN flights to divert to the United States (US) military headquarters at Bagram, about an hour’s drive north of Kabul.

One UN official said the flight ban was imposed because of fears of a rocket attack on Western targets. Hay said the airport was now operating normally.

On Thursday, the Afghan army said it had captured a man responsible for a series of rocket attacks on the airport in the southeastern city of Jalalabad. It said Mohammad Wasim was arrested with a rocket launcher on the west side of the Jalalabad airport on Tuesday while preparing another attack.

It said he was believed to be a member of the Al Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden, which had training camps in the Jalalabad area during the rule of the fundamentalist Taliban regime that ended late last year.

Jalalabad airport has come under sporadic but ineffective rocket attacks in recent months.

Similar attacks have been mounted on US troops bases in eastern Afghanistan who have been pursuing remnants of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, the organisation blamed for the attacks on the US last year. —Reuters

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