Word: kabul
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...along the main highway north of Kabul, Soviet and Afghan air and ground artillery bombardments rained down on guerrilla positions. Earlier, Soviet helicopter gunships and fighter-bombers had pounded Charikar, the capital of Parwan province, and villages in the nearby Kheyr Khaneh Pass, sending thousands of refugees into the capital city of Kabul. Those who were able to flee across the border into Pakistan called last week's attacks the heaviest since the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. After the attacks, Soviet helicopters dropped leaflets saying "Peace...
...through Soviet troop withdrawal as part of a negotiated settlement." Western military analysts in Pakistan said that the Soviets may be trying to soften up their withdrawal routes for the time when a pullout is arranged. But Moscow was hardly taking any chances. In Ghazni, south of Kabul, some 10,000 Soviet troops, along with ground and air support, were reportedly massed in preparation for a maneuver to seal off the border with Pakistan...
...anniversary was marked in a peculiar but strangely appropriate way. The 35,000 Soviet soldiers stationed in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, were put on the highest alert. Armored cars, their sirens wailing, raced through the streets as truck convoys dropped Soviet soldiers off at the main intersections. Roadblocks were set up every hundred yards or so, and citizens were stopped, searched and asked for their identification cards. Meanwhile, squads of soldiers went house to house, looking for high school graduates to fill the ranks of the unpopular and demoralized Afghan army. When the soldiers found a potential recruit, they...
...Soviets, however, were not anxious to cause any trouble on the third anniversary of that cold day in late December 1979 when Soviet paratroopers landed at Kabul airport and began a prolonged, costly and so far unsuccessful campaign to control Afghanistan. Babrak Karmal, 53, the Kremlin's hand-picked leader, remains in power, but the Soviet Union's 105,000 troops have failed in rooting out the mujahedin, the ragtag but stubborn guerrillas who control most of the countryside. Neither side has gained or lost much ground over the past three years, and all signs point...
...lethal ingredient in yellow rain. At a press conference that followed Shultz's statement, State Department officials showed one of two Soviet gas masks that they said had been captured in Afghanistan. One taken from the head of a dead Soviet soldier, the other obtained clandestinely in Kabul, each apparently carried traces of mycotoxins, which had presumably been used in attacks against Afghan rebels. The State Department also released photographs showing the skin lesions that afflict yellow-rain victims...