KABUL, 20 April 2004 — Afghan police and foreign peacekeepers yesterday arrested a senior member of wanted warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s forces, the International Security Assistance Force announced.
The capture comes just six days after another suspected top Hekmatyar loyalist was arrested in a similar joint raid in the Afghan capital.
The man, who was not identified, was among eight Afghans captured in an early-morning raid on a compound in Kabul, ISAF spokesman commander Chris Henderson told reporters.
All eight were suspected of links either to Al-Qaeda or Hekmatyar’s radical Islamist faction Hizb-e-Islami, Henderson said.
“This morning Kabul police with the support of ISAF troops raided a compound in downtown Kabul ... where they arrested eight people with suspected links to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Al-Qaeda,” he said.
Five rockets slammed into a US Army base in the troubled southeast Afghan border city of Khost at the weekend but caused no casualties, police said yesterday. The rockets were fired late Sunday at Khost airport, 10 kilometers from the city center, where troops from the US-led coalition are based
“Five rockets landed at a distance from Khost city airport, there were no casualties or serious damage,” provincial police chief Abdul Sabor Allahyar told AFP by telephone from Khost.
