Helicopter gunships belonging to opposition troops fired rockets in the vicinity of the Kabul airport early Wednesday, hours after the devastating terror attacks in the United States, according to Taliban soldiers and eyewitnesses.
The United States quickly denied any involvement in the violence in Afghanistan, which has been shielding Osama bin Laden, a suspected terrorism mastermind linked by some U.S. officials to Tuesday's attacks in New York and Washington.
Kabul shuddered with the first explosions around 2:30 a.m. (2200 GMT Tuesday). They came in rapid succession, seconds apart. Smoke billowed skyward. An acrid smell of smoke lingered near the airport, where Taliban soldiers erected a barricade.
Less than one kilometer (mile) from the combined military and civilian airport, sullen Taliban soldiers with kalashnikov rifles blocked the road, turning cars away. They grunted their orders, refused to speak and waved their rifles, ordering vehicles to turn back.
``It was the airport that was attacked. A helicopter came in and dropped its rockets,'' said Abdul Jabbar, an elderly man walking along the dusty road near the airport.
``At first, we were worrying that it was an attack by America. But then I thought it is stupid to worry, our life is so bad what difference does it make,'' said Jabbar, a day laborer, who leaves his home each morning before sunrise to look for work.
The attack occurred during the nighttime curfew in effect in Kabul, and there were conflicting reports of whether it involved one or two helicopters.
Taliban's spokesman in southern Kandahar, its headquarters, said there was no attack. He said the explosions were the result of a fire at an ammunition dump in the northern suburb of Khair Khana and that the sound of aircraft were Taliban pilots moving fighter aircraft to safety. The Taliban operate helicopter gunships and fighter jets.
``There was an explosion in an ammunition depot, and our aircraft were flown to a safe place, creating a misunderstanding that there had been an attack. We deny that there was any attack on Kabul,'' he said.
However, Taliban soldiers stopped reporters going toward Khair Khana neighborhood, saying there was no explosion. It was unclear from Muttmain's statement why it was necessary to move the aircraft to safety.
In Washington, White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan said the explosions reported in Kabul were not retaliatory attacks by the United States.
``The United States is not responsible,'' she said.
Her comments were echoed by U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld during a Pentagon briefing in Washington. ``I've seen those reports,'' he said of the Kabul explosions. ``In no way is the United States government connected to those explosions.''
Another U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the fighting in Kabul appeared to be rocket attacks by Afghan rebels opposing the ruling Taliban in response to the attack on a rebel general over the weekend.
Afghanistan's hardline Taliban rulers condemned the U.S. attacks and rejected suggestions that Osama bin Laden, who's being protected by the Afghanistan government, could be behind them.
The Taliban's frontline with opposition soldiers is barely 50 kilometers (30 miles) north of the capital. There, Taliban soldiers are lined up against opposition forces. Fighting in that area has increased in recent days, but this would be the first major assault by opposition forces so close to the capital.
Uncertainty also persisted Wednesday over whether rebel Gen. Ahmed Shah Massood, the leader of the opposition to the Taliban's hard-line Islamic rule, survived a suicide bombing attack Sunday.
The bombing in northern Afghanistan killed Massood's aide as well as the bombers, two men posing as television journalists.
The Russian news agency ITAR-Tass reported that Massood had also died. But an opposition spokesman and Massood's brother in London have said he was gravely injured in the attack, not killed. The president of Afghanistan's government-in-exile, Burhanuddin Rabbani, issued a statement saying Massood was injured, but alive and that he had spoken to him.
Massood, 48, has led a fractured collection of groups who fought each other when they ruled much of Afghanistan for four years until the Taliban took control in 1996. The opposition blamed Sunday's bombing on the Taliban and neighboring Pakistan, which they say supports the Islamic militia. The Taliban and Pakistan denied any role in the attack.
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