Author: Agencies
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: October 25, 2001
Introduction: 35 Harkat militants
killed in Kabul; Islamabad refuses to accept bodies
Pakistani border officials on Wednesday
fired tear gas to disperse stone-throwing demonstrators in Karachi after
35 Harkatul Mujahideen militants were killed by US bombing in Kabul, witnesses
said. Border officials at Torkham crossing in North West Frontier Province
had prevented the entry of eight bodies from among at least 20 members
of the Pakistani-based militant group which is active in the Kashmir Valley.
A crowd of more than 5,000 people
had gathered in Karachi for funeral prayers for the militants. They grew
angry after being told the authorities had refused to let eight of the
bodies back into Pakistan.
An official at Torkham said the
bodies had arrived but been refused entry. "We had instructions from higher
authorities not to receive the bodies," said the official, Bakhtiar Khan.
The demonstrators, who stripped
one policeman naked, vowed they would not leave the public square where
the protest was staged until the government agreed the bodies could be
returned to Pakistan. The Pakistan based Afghan Islamic Press said the
eight bodies were sent back to the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad.
Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokesman
Riaz Mohammad Khan said the government had no information about the deaths
in Kabul or whether bodies had been refused. But he said: "For quite some
time the Pakistan government has impressed on the Afghanistan government
that they should not allow any Pakistanis to be part of any of their forces."
The group was staying in a house
in a military compound area called Daraluman in the Afghan capital Kabul.
A Harkat spokesperson told Reuters in Muzaffarabad, state capital of Pakistani
occupied Kashmir: "We have unconfirmed reports that 35 fighters have been
martyred. We have the names of 20 people who died in the attack." The list
of dead included six commanders of the group, including one Ustad Farooq
from Lahore. The spokesman also named one Chacha Lahori, sometimes called
Baba Lahori as a casualty of the bombing.
This is the second time Harakatul
Mujahindeen has lost men in US attacks on Afghanistan. Nine fighters were
killed and several wounded in cruise missile attacks by the United States
on a training camp in the eastern Khost area of Afghanistan in August 1998.
That attack was launched after the, bombings of the US embassies in Kenya
and Tanzania in 1998.
The group's main leader, Maulana
Fazlur Rehman Khalil, has not been spotted since Washington put the group's
name on the list of 27 individuals and groups whose assets were frozen.
Meanwhile, a US helicopter came
under fire from the ground at a Pakistani airbase as it tried to refuel
recovering a search- and-rescue helicopter that had crashed earlier, Pentagon
spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said on Tuesday.
She said the helicopter fired back
on Saturday, aborted the refueling stop and flew to another airfield where
US forces are deployed. "There was no further damage to the aircraft and
no in juries to the crew." Clarke told a regular Pentagon briefing. Navy
Rear. Adm. John Stufflebeem, a senior official on the US Military Joint
Stag said that other US helicopters had been fired on in Pakistan where
there is widespread opposition to 17 days of US air strikes against Afghanistan.
The Pentagon also admitted that
US Navy fighter jets accidentally dropped a 1,000-pound bomb near a senior
citizens' home in the northern Afghan city of Herat and two 500-pound bombs
in a residential area northwest of Kabul over the weekend in strikes that
could have resulted in civilian casualties.
The two errant airstrikes added
to the growing number of reports of strikes on civilian buildings by US.
led forces in the 17-day-old air campaign that are complicating the Bush
administration's efforts to maintain support among Muslim allies for its
war on terrorism.
Clarke, the Pentagon's chief spokeswoman,
said the senior citizens home in Herat could be the same facility that
a United Nations official identified yesterday as a military hospital.
While attributing both mishaps to guidance-system malfunctions, Clarke
refused to be drawn on claims by the Taliban that as many as 100 people
had been killed in Herat.
