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Ammo Dump Blast Kills At Least 19
Saturday, June 29, 2002
(Time)
By Charles Rex Arbogast
Associated Press Writer

Workers salvage bags of sugar from a customs house after a series of explosions at a munitions depot nearby in Spinboldak, Afghanistan, destroyed the storage stall roofs Friday morning. According to a local Afghan commander, the explosions, which sent rockets and other munitions spraying through the town, were sparked by a rocket attack of unknown origin and killed at least 19 people.
Image Credit: The Associated Press.

Residents said munitions rained down all over town. "A mortar fell on my house," said Abdul Ghaffar, a teen-age soldier who stood guard outside the compound Friday. "It killed my mother and my brother." Children and other people had earlier entered the compound looking for scrap metal they could sell.

SPINBOLDAK, Afghanistan -- AP
Rockets, bullets and flaming munitions ripped through a dusty border town Friday after a large ammunition dump blew up, killing at least 19 people and injuring dozens of others. The local Afghan commander blamed a rocket attack for triggering the blast.

The explosion was the latest in a series of violent incidents to rock the volatile region on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan frontier. On Wednesday, 10 Pakistani soldiers died in a shootout with suspected al-Qaida fugitives in a remote tribal area to the northeast.

Fazaludin Agha, the local commander in Spinboldak, 300 miles southwest of the Afghan capital of Kabul, said it was not known who fired the rocket he said set off the initial explosion at the ammunition dump late Thursday. Secondary explosions continued into the early hours on Friday.

The commander said the victims included women, children and Afghan soldiers. At least seven soldiers who had been guarding the munitions cache were missing.

Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Dave Lapan said no U.S. military forces were involved or in the area when the explosions occurred.
(More: TheWorldLink.com News Source)
2002 © The Associated Press.

Dan