Renewed Fighting in Kabul Shatters Truce

KABUL, Afghanistan â€”  Heavy machine gun and artillery fire boomed over the capital Sunday as rival Muslim guerrilla factions shattered a weeklong truce.

There were no immediate reports of casualties. It was not clear if the fighting in the western suburb of Kote Sanghi and in the town of Paghman, 10 miles northwest of the capital, had spread to other areas.

Thousands of people have been killed in the last 13 months since Muslim rebels seized power from a Soviet-installed government and began fighting among themselves for power. Two weeks of violence in and around Kabul earlier this month left 1,300 dead.

Fighting had stopped May 23, three days after Afghanistan’s warring factions signed a truce. But three previous cease-fire agreements had erupted in bloodshed, and few Afghans expected the latest attempt to hold.

The main factions in Afghanistan’s civil war are the Jamaat-i-Islami of President Burhanuddin Rabbani and the Hezb-i-Islami militia led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who was designated prime minister in an earlier attempt at compromise. Both have the support of other militias.

A Defense Ministry official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the latest fighting was between Jamaat-i-Islami and Hezb-i-Wahadat, a Shiite Muslim group allied with Hekmatyar.

One Jamaat guerrilla said his side was firing to celebrate Id al-Adha, the three-day Muslim holiday that begins today.

Earlier Sunday, another Defense Ministry official accused Hekmatyar’s fighters of breaking the cease-fire in Paghman by attacking government fighters on Saturday. He did not provide details, and the report could not be confirmed.