Al-Qaeda Continues Its Activity in Afghanistan: FM

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Friday, August 09, 2002

Al-Qaeda Continues Its Activity in Afghanistan: FM

Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah said Thursday that there were thousands of al-Qaeda members and Taliban remnants continuing their activities inside Afghanistan at present.

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Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah said Thursday that there were thousands of al-Qaeda members and Taliban remnants continuing their activities inside Afghanistan at present.

He said that all of the prisoners of war, who managed to escapefrom the third directorate of the national security department andfought with Afghan garrison soldiers in the southern suburb of Kabul Wednesday morning, were high-ranking members of al-Qaeda captured after September 11 of last year in the search for terrorist holdouts.

"There is no question that they are al-Qaeda. They are dangerous members of al-Qaeda. They are high-ranking," he said.

Abdullah told reporters that the 13 al-Qaeda members, including12 Pakistanis and 1 Turkish, broke the window bars and jumped out of the wall of the prison, and managed to escape from the buildingat 2 a.m. (local time) on Wednesday morning (2130 GMT Tuesday). Seven of them are from the same room of the prison.

In the first encounter with Afghan security forces at 6 a.m. local time (0130 GMT), the prisoners killed 2 garrison soldiers and wounded another, who died later in a military hospital, and escaped to a small village, where they were stopped by some armed villagers.

They took hostage of several villagers before the reinforcementof the garrison forces arrived. Then they escaped to the top of the mountain behind the village and started the engagement of firing, the most severe since the Taliban regime was toppled last year. All of the 13 prisoners were killed due to their unyielding resistance. Three of them committed suicide with hand grenades to avoid being captured again.

"They have resisted until the end. They refrained from surrendering," said the foreign minister. "Their resistance is up to the last minute and to the last bullet."

The investigation is still under way to find out who provided the prisoners with facilities and weapons, he added, indicating that there are some al-Qaeda members supporting them.

Abdullah disclosed that 50 percent of hundreds of captured terrorists, who were being held in Afghan prisons across the country and most of whom are Pakistanis, would be released in the coming weeks for humanitarian reasons, after making sure that theyare only foot soldiers of al-Qaeda network and will never pose anythreat to Afghanistan and their native country.

He stressed that the National Security Council has made the decision and informed the Pakistani government through diplomatic channels.

"It was suggested that prisoners, who have spent long time in our prisons and are not identified as very dangerous or very high-ranking members of al-Qaeda, could be released," he said.

Security problem has been alarming since the assassination of Vice President Haji Abdul Qadeer in broad daylight on his first day of work earlier last month and President Hamid Karzai's decision to replace his Afghan bodyguards with US Special Forces.

Sources said that terrorist activities have greatly increased in Kabul and al-Qaeda plans to launch more terrorist attacks to show their presence in the capital city, which enjoys the best security in the country with around 5,000 peacekeepers from 20 countries patrolling the streets 24 hours a day.

The deputy director of the General Security Bureau of Kabul City, General Afzar Aman, told Xinhua that intelligence shows thatAl-Qaeda plans to launch terrorist attacks on Afghan Independence Day on August 19, and on the first anniversary of the death of thefamous, charismatic anti-Taliban commander Massoud, who was assassinated just two days before September 11, 2001.

On July 29, police stopped a Toyota Corolla car in an accident in Kabul city, three blocks from the US embassy, and found in the car over 400 kilograms of C-4 and Trotil explosives combined with 500 bolts and 20 detonators. The arrested and unidentified foreigner admitted that he was a suicide bomber from al-Qaeda.

Amrullah Saleh, chief of the first security department under the national security bureau, said that the first target was Karzai, or failing that, other high-level ministers or foreign compounds.

"They do not leave any chance for malfunction. For each thing, they have an alternative," said Saleh. "If it went off, it had thepower to cause disastrous damage in a radius of 500 meters."

"There was no timer used in this car, no remote control device.It was designed to be suicide."

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