22 Pakistani Fighters Die in Attack

05/05/2001| IslamWeb

TORKHAM, Afghanistan (Islamweb & News Agencies) - A Pakistani militant group said Wednesday that 22 of its fighters were killed in a U.S. attack on Kabul - the deadliest known strike against a group linked to Osama bin Laden since the air campaign began Oct. 7.
A group of men were seen bringing the bodies of 11 of the dead Pakistani fighters to the Torkham border crossing Wednesday between Afghanistan and Pakistan, hoping to bury them in their homeland. The Pakistani border guards refused to let them cross, according to the Taliban's local security chief, Noor Mohammed Hanifi.
U.S. jets kept up heavy night-and-day pounding of the Afghan capital Wednesday, with huge explosions in the direction of Taliban military sites on the outskirts.
Warplanes also struck Taliban front-line positions north of Kabul for the fourth straight day as the opposition alliance said it was reinforcing its troop strength in the area.
The slain Pakistani militants were members of the outlawed group Harakat ul-Mujahedeen, some of whom had crossed into Afghanistan since the U.S. bombing began to help ``devise a plan for fighting against America,'' said Muzamal Shah, a senior official from the group.
A U.S. bomb struck a house in Kabul where the fighters were meeting Tuesday, Shah said in Karachi, Pakistan. Twenty-two of the militants died, including several senior commanders.
Harakat ul-Mujahedeen, or ``Movement of the Holy Warriors,'' was declared a terrorist organization by United States years ago and was among 27 groups and individuals whose assets were frozen by the United States, Pakistan and other countries after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, which Washington blames on bin Laden.
The group is one of the largest militant organizations fighting Indian soldiers in the disputed Kashmir region. (Read photo caption below)
When Pakistani border officials turned away the bodies at the crossing, the group slipped the bodies across the frontier elsewhere, witnesses said. Some of the dead had come from the western Pakistan border towns of Chaman and Dera Ismail Khan and the central port city of Karachi.
In Karachi, about 4,000 supporters of the group protested, demanding the government allow the fighters to be buried in Pakistan. Police fired tear gas at the protesters, who threw stones at police.
Hundreds of Pakistani militants have crossed into Afghanistan since U.S. airstrikes were launched Oct. 7 to root out bin Laden and punish Afghanistan's Taliban rulers. Many of the Pakistani fighters have said they were joining a holy war against the United States.
Pakistan has called for a broad-based, multiethnic government to replace the Taliban. On Wednesday, about 1,000 Afghans, including tribal leaders, clerics and supporters of the former king Mohammad Zaher Shah, gathered in the Pakistani border city of Peshawar to discuss prospects for a new government.
PHOTO CAPTION:
Harkatul Mujahideen is active in Kashmir