April 3, 2003	Thursday	Muharram 30, 1424

WASHINGTON, April 2: The war in Iraq has not caused an upsurge in fighting in Afghanistan, the US Central Command said on Wednesday.

The clarification follows reports in the US media that the attack on Iraq has encouraged pro-Taliban and Al Qaeda forces in Afghanistan to intensify their activities against US forces.

“There has been a great deal of analysis in the media about an upswing in attacks against coalition forces since the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom. It is not correct,” says a CENTCOM statement.

The Central Command says that after reading about these reported increase in attacks, it retrieved data about previous attacks on coalition forces in Afghanistan during the second half of the months of Nov 2002 and January this yar and compared them to the last two weeks of March following the start of operations in Iraq.

“The number of recent attacks shows no increase outside of the norm,” the statement said. Attacks in the last 15 days of November numbered 34; the last half of January totalled, 22. There have been 17 attacks during the last two weeks of March.

The CENTCOM said that the heaviest number of attacks came in November, with a total of 55. Comparatively, March brought a total of 27 attacks.

ROCKET ATTACKS: The Central Command said on Wednesday two rockets were fired at one of its bases near Kandahar on Monday.

A rocket was fired at another US base in the eastern Paktika province on Monday night and a US armoured vehicle struck an anti-tank mine near Kandahar, also on Monday night.

A second anti-tank mine was discovered and destroyed. No one was injured in these attacks.