Kabul: Insurgents fired two rockets on Thursday toward a site where more than 2,000 Afghan elders are attending a national assembly to discuss the future of US military presence in Afghanistan, officials said. Both rockets missed their target, but one man was injured.
No one claimed responsibility for firing the rockets, but the Taliban had threatened to disrupt the gathering — called a loya jirga, or grand council.
"Everybody knows that they are trying to hit the jirga, but instead innocent civilians were the victims," Mohammad Shafi said standing near where one rocket landed with a thud at about 8 a.m. "If the jirga weren`t going on, there would have been no rockets. If the man loses his hand, who will feed his family?"
Security for the four-day jirga is tight. Much of Kabul went into a lockdown mode ahead of the meeting and some foreigners working in Kabul were not allowed to travel around the city. Roads were closed and intelligence agents swarmed the meeting hall on the outskirts of the capital.
At the last such meeting — a "peace jirga" in June 2010 — Taliban fighters wearing suicide vests fired at a tent holding some 1,500 dignitaries, lawmakers and civil society activists. The assault triggered a battle with security forces that killed at least two militants. President Hamid Karzai, who was delivering a speech at the time, brushed off the interruption and urged fighters to lay down their arms.
Since then, a new hardened structure has been built at the jirga site.
Karzai spoke Wednesday on the opening day of the meeting where the elders are discussing negotiations under way for an US-Afghan agreement to govern the presence of US troops after 2014, when most international forces are to have left or moved into support roles.
Karzai asked the elders to back negotiations for a new security pact, assuring them that he would demand an end to unpopular night raids in which troops swoop down from helicopters and search Afghan homes. He said US troops should be allowed to stay, but that the night raids should end and that the Afghan government, not Americans, should be put in charge of detainees.
Karzai doesn`t need the elders` permission to broker a pact with the US. He wants their stamp of approval to strengthen his negotiating position.
So far, Karzai`s terms have been unacceptable to American officials. The US-led coalition has given no indication that it is willing to stop the raids, and says the night operations, which are conducted with Afghan security forces, are an effective way to keep pressure on militants.
In Wednesday`s attack, the Afghan Ministry of Interior said the two rockets were fired from an unknown location.
Kabul police criminal director Mohammad Zahir said one person was wounded.
One rocket landed on a hillside about one kilometer from the meeting site. The other landed farther away in an open area, shattering a few windows in buildings near where merchants were selling vegetables and fruits.
"Me and my four friends were drinking tea and suddenly we heard an explosion," said Shafi, a 28-year-old taxi driver. "We didn`t know if it was a bomb or a rocket."
Shafi said he helped a man whose left hand was bleeding find a ride to the hospital.
Separately, the US-led coalition said more than 25 insurgents were killed after they attacked coalition and Afghan troops with guns and rocket-propelled grenades Wednesday in eastern Afghanistan near the Pakistan border. The troops called in NATO aircraft, which killed the insurgents in Nazyan district of Nangarhar province.
Bureau Report
