The Hindu : International : Search for survivors of arms cache blast

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Wednesday, May 04, 2005

International

International

Search for survivors of arms cache blast

PAJGA (AFGHANISTAN): Hundreds of Afghan villagers and police searched through smoking rubble of flattened homes on Tuesday for any survivors of an explosion that killed 29 persons and wounded 70 at an illegal ammunition dump.

Monday's blast at the home of a former militia commander in Pajga village of Baghlan province, 120 km north of Kabul left a huge, smoking pile of broken rocks and bricks, the remains of seven homes.

``The search is going on for survivors and authorities are still investigating what caused it,'' said the Interior Ministry spokesman, Lutfullah Mashal. ``One suspicion is that it could have been sabotage, the result of a factional difference,'' he said.

Insurgents from the outsted Taliban regime do not operate in that part of Afghanistan and were not suspected of being involved. At the blast site, men lined up in a row tossing away rocks one by one in their search for survivors. ``It was six in the morning and I was returning from the mosque when I heard a massive explosion. I was knocked unconscious, fell down and was brought to hospital,'' one of the wounded said in hospital in the provincial capital, Pul-i-Khumri.

The ammunition was hidden by Jalal Bajgaye, a former commander who was demobilised in a government drive to disarm factional forces but kept the ordnance, including artillery rounds and mortar bombs.

The commander was not killed in the blast, as reported earlier, Mr. Mashal said. — Reuters, AP

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