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Accent on Tension: Afghan School Shelled
Thursday, February 28, 2002
By John F. Burns
The New York Times

"Afghanistan is now the center of the world's attention after a long and shameful period of neglect," UN secretary general Kofi Annan said. "We must be prepared to stay the course; otherwise all our work will have been in vain."

KABUL, Afghanistan -- NYT
A mortar attack on a boys' school 40 miles from Kabul killed one child today and wounded at least 30, heightening concerns that local power struggles could plunge Afghanistan again into violent strife.

The school is in Sarobi, a notorious trouble spot on the strategic highway between Kabul and Jalalabad on Afghanistan's eastern frontier with Pakistan.

Officials in Kabul said it was not clear whether the school had been hit by mistake. But they noted that the Sarobi area, like many others across the country, has been troubled by tensions between contending warlords in the 15 weeks since Taliban power began to disintegrate. Four foreign journalists were shot to death near Sarobi shortly after the fall of Kabul, in circumstances that remain unclear.

Relatives who brought some of the injured to a hospital in Kabul said that the mortar shell had struck a classroom roof as school was starting for the day, and that the casualties included boys as young as 8.

An Interior Ministry official, Muhammad Azimi, said authorities in the capital did not know for sure who had fired the mortar but suspected renegades loyal to the Taliban and Al Qaeda. This appeared to be a reference to a local warlord, Isatullah, who was a Taliban ally until he made a late switch and joined the Northern Alliance forces capturing Kabul.

In this, Mr. Isatullah is similar to many former local Taliban commanders who have remained active in their areas, publicly forswearing their Taliban loyalties but using their militias and weapons to contend for power in the new era.
(More: The New York Times News Source)
2002 © The New York Times Co.

Dan