Afghanistan: Assassination and bombing plot on vice-president foiled

AFGHAN security forces have seized five suspected militants and 22,000lb of explosives smuggled in from Pakistan intended for an attack on Kabul as well as three fighters alleged to have been planning to assassinate the vice-president.

The apparent foiling of a major Taleban assault came a week after militants, said to be part of the Pakistan-based Haqqani group, launched co-ordinated assaults in the heart of Kabul and three other Afghan cities.

United States officials said they had stepped up pressure on Islamabad to crack down on the Haqqanis, who specialise in high-profile strikes against well-protected targets.

Three of the five men arrested with explosives were said to be members of the Pakistani Taleban, while the other two were Afghan Taleban, national director for security spokesman Shafiqullah Tahiry claimed. He said the men’s orders came from militant leaders with ties to Pakistani intelligence.

Tahiry said the explosives were packed in 400 bags and hidden under potatoes loaded in a lorry with Pakistani licence plates. The men confessed they “had planned to carry out a terrorist attack in a key point in Kabul city,” Tahiry said. He provided a DVD showing images of the lorry and the recorded confessions of the men, but no other proof to back up the claims.

He said the three Pakistani members of the group picked up the explosives just outside Peshawar, and were under the orders of two local Taleban leaders, Noor Afzal and Mohammad Omar, who Tahiry said had ties with the country’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI.

Tahiry also said security forces had foiled an assassination attempt by the Haqqani network against Afghan vice-president Mohammed Karim Khalili.

He said three Afghan men, arrested on 15 April, the day the Kabul attacks began, planned to kill Khalili at his home.