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U.S. Bombs Pakistani Territory, Kandahar U.N. Demining Agency
ISLAMABAD, Nov 16 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Four stray bombs dropped during an overnight U.S. air strike landed in Pakistani tribal territory close to the border with Afghanistan, officials said Friday, as the U.N. reported that its demining agency in Kandahar had been bombed as well.
A Pakistani interior ministry official said the bombs fell in an "uninhabited tract of land" in the semi-autonomous tribal zone of Khurram in North West Frontier Province.
"So far we have no reports of casualties or damages," the official said, adding that two of the bombs exploded near a border observation post.
The incident marked the first time bombs have fallen on Pakistani territory since the launch on October 7 of U.S. air strikes against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and the al-Qaeda network of terrorist suspect Osama bin Laden.
Pakistan has beefed up security along the border amid fears that rogue Taliban elements or al-Qaeda leaders may try to sneak across.
President Pervez Musharraf was chairing a high level meeting Friday to review the border situation and security arrangements.
Meanwhile, the U.N. said that its demining agency in Kandahar, where Taliban soldiers are holding out against fierce U.S. attacks, suffered almost $1.5 million worth of equipment destruction.
U.N. spokeswoman Stephanie Bunker told a news briefing in Islamabad the U.N. Mine Action Program complex was hit Thursday night. There were no known casualties.
But it was not known how many bombs hit the complex, or if it came from the intensive bombing carried out by U.S. warplanes or from a missile fired from another source, said Bunker.
Fighting has been raging around Kandahar, the headquarters of the Taliban, in recent days after the Islamic militia fell back from the Afghan capital of Kabul as opposition forces overtook it.
But considerable damage was caused, the spokeswoman emphasized.
Bunker said four excavators, six buses, five trucks, and $300,000 worth of other equipment was destroyed.
"For the moment we only have verbal reports. We don't know if it was a bomb or a missile, but it was hit," she said.
U.N. demining experts have been working in Afghanistan for several years trying to clear mines laid during the 1979-89 Soviet occupation and artillery left from the civil war that followed.
Afghanistan remains one of the most heavily mined countries in the world, with almost 26,000 civilians killed or maimed every year, including 8,000 to 10,000 children, according the U.N. Foundation.
Heavy U.S. bombing Thursday night and Friday destroyed the Taliban militia's foreign ministry building and a mosque and killed 11 civilians, the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press said earlier Friday.
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