0
BAGRAM AIR BASE, June 20: Unknown attackers fired up to seven rockets at a US base in southeastern Afghanistan, but there were no casualties or damage, a US military spokesman said on Friday.
“Seven rockets impacted in the vicinity of the fire base at Urgun-e last night (Thursday),” Colonel Rodney Davis told reporters at Bagram air base, 50 kilometres north of Kabul.
Colonel Davis was unable to say who fired the rockets, but similar attacks have been blamed on Taliban remnants, their Al Qaeda allies or extremists linked to former prime minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who is attempting to destabilize the government of President Hamid Karzai. Hekmatyar has been declared a wanted terrorist by Washington.
Some 19 months after the toppling of the Taliban, militia remnants and Al Qaeda fighters continue to launch regular attacks on foreign and pro-government targets.
“Rocket attacks are fairly routine, particularly in that area,” Colonel Davis said.
Rockets appear to be the weapon of choice for the attackers, but they are inaccurate and rarely hit their targets or cause casualties.
INSECURITY: The return of a quarter of a million refugees to Afghanistan this year in the face of rampant insecurity was hailed by the United Nations refugee agency on Friday as it marked World Refugee Day.
“Some 156,000 Afghan refugees from Pakistan and about 100,000 from Iran have returned to Afghanistan since January,” UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) spokesman Jack Redden said on the sidelines of Refugee Day celebrations in the Pakistani capital.
“The numbers are encouraging despite security concerns in Afghanistan.”
The returnees have braved sporadic fighting between warlords and rival ethnic groups in provincial areas and a guerrilla campaign against Afghan troops and United States-led forces hunting Al Qaeda cadres. Rebels are targeting the forces with rockets, landmines and suicide bomb attacks.
Last year, following the late 2001 collapse of the harsh Taliban regime, a staggering 1.8 million Afghans returned home.
UNHCR’s Pakistan director Philip Karani said he did not expect 2003 returns to match those of 2002, during which a record 1.5 million refugees returned from Pakistan alone.
Approximately 1.8 million Afghan refugees remain in Pakistan. It signed an agreement in March with Afghanistan and the UNHCR aimed at repatriating them voluntarily over the next three years.
Afghanistan’s eastern neighbour has sheltered some 3.5 million Afghans who fled drought and war over the past quarter of a century.
Some 50 percent of Afghan children still in camps in Pakistan do not go to school, a UN official said. Refugee Day celebrations this year focussed on children.—AFP
