November 21, 2001	Wednesday	Ramazan 5, 1422

KABUL, Nov 20: An American television crew rented a house in Kabul without realising that the property came complete with a 250 kilogram unexploded bomb right next to the kitchen, UN spokesman Eric Falt said Tuesday.

According to Falt, the landlord appeared to have felt a sudden pang of conscience some time after renting out the house and contacted the UN demining agency.

When the bomb disposal team arrived, they found the television crew sipping tea in the kitchen, blissfully unaware of the deadly piece of ordnance nestling in the room next door.

The bomb, apparently dropped during a US air raid, had made a hole in the roof of the house and buried itself 30 centimetres in the ground.

The house was swiftly evacuated and sealed off.

Falt said the UN demining agency planned to deploy 4,500 personnel in Afghanistan over the next three weeks.

The country is one of the most-heavily mined regions on earth — a legacy of the 1979-89 Soviet occupation, years of civil war and, most recently, the US-led war against the Taliban.—AFP