BAGRAM, Afghanistan, 13 September 2003 — US-led forces hunting for Taleban militants called in bombers to foil an ambush in southern Afghanistan, but there were no reports of casualties on either side, the US Army said yesterday.

The attempted ambush took place in the southern province of Zabul on Thursday, the second anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

“About two to four anti-coalition militia directed small-arms fire at the coalition soldiers,” Col. Rodney Davis told reporters at Bagram air base, headquarters of US-led forces in Afghanistan. “The coalition soldiers were reinforced by B-1 bombers and A-10s.” Davis said two laser-guided bombs were dropped but there were no reports of casualties on either side.

The ambush took place in Dai Chopan district, scene of a major battle in recent weeks in which US and Afghan government forces said they had killed more than 100 Taleban rebels. Two rounds of small-arms fire were also directed at a guard tower at Bagram on Thursday night but there were no casualties or damage, Davis said.

Separately, two rockets were fired at camps used by the NATO-led peacekeeping force in Kabul on Thursday night, but there were no reported casualties. NATO-led peacekeepers were on heightened alert yesterday as they investigated the overnight rocket attack which injured a Canadian worker at their main base in the Afghan capital, the second such attack this year. The rocket exploded at 1720 GMT Thursday in the International Security Assistance Force base, known as Camp Warehouse, housing hundreds of troops in east Kabul.

A Canadian civil contractor was slightly injured, ISAF spokesman US Maj. Kevin Arata said. The Canadian, who was sleeping near a shipping container struck by the rocket, suffered slight injury to his back.

An hour later a blast shook another ISAF base used by the Canadian troop contingent in southwest Kabul. The cause of that blast was not yet known, Arata said. Interior ministry spokesman Ahmadzai said three rockets had been fired at ISAF bases but Arata said he could only confirm one rocket and the second explosion.

ISAF patrols have been dispatched to investigate both blasts and “soldiers were put on a heightened state of alert,” ISAF announced in a statement. Arata said it was not known who carried out the attack.

Meanwhile, Afghan Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai said yesterday President Hamid Karzai would soon take action over the homes of poor families bulldozed in what has been described as a land grab by powerful Cabinet ministers. “When land is taken like it was in Kabul a few days ago, this creates a crisis of governance,” Ghani said. “Ministers should absolutely be forbidden to use public land for private gains.”

On Thursday, a senior UN official accused Vice President and Defense Minister Mohammad Qasim Fahim and others of grabbing land from the poor and said they should be removed from office. Miloon Kothari, UN special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, said Afghanistan’s overall rights situation was worsening nearly two years after the fall of the Taleban and urged that the UN’s monitoring mechanism be strengthened.

Afghan Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai said his country could become a narco-mafia state unless the world honored its promises of help. Ghani said hopes had been raised when the Taleban were forced from power in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks two years ago, but now Afghanistan was at a crossroads as it waited for the world to deliver. “We have three possibilities. One is a narco-mafia state. The criminalized economy would expand from drugs to mining and to other areas,” Ghani told Reuters in an interview.

Another possibility, if Afghanistan did not get the money and international support it needed, was the country could lurch from one crisis to another, he said. Either way, the cost to the West could ultimately be much higher than the cost of helping the country now. But time was running out, he said.

“Expectations should not have been raised to that extent,” he said, referring to enthusiastic pledges of aid in the weeks after the late 2001 fall of the Taleban. “But now the task is to deliver on steady progress to improve the lives of ordinary people.”