Plot to assassinate Afghan VP thwarted

Sun Apr 22, 2012 12:43AM GMT

Afghan intelligence forces have foiled an assassination attempt targeting Second Vice President Abdul Karim Khalili and have arrested three failed assassins in Kabul.


National Directorate of Security (NDS) spokesman Shafiqullah Tahiri told reporters in Kabul on Saturday that the bombers, according to their own confessions, were linked to the Pakistan-based Haqqani terrorist network, The New York Times reported.

The attackers identified themselves as Abdul Khan, a Paktia resident, Noorullah, a resident of Ghazni currently living in Kohat town of Pakistan, and Zabihullah, who hails from Maidan Wardak province, in video footage released by the NDS on Saturday.

“All the detained individuals confessed their involvement during the preliminary investigations and admitted that they had been dispatched to military, terrorist, and training camps in Miranshah, Pakistan,” Tahiri said.

“They were trained in the use of light and heavy weapons by Arab and Pakistani trainers,” the Afghan intelligence official added.

Miranshah, the main town in the North Waziristan tribal region of northwest Pakistan, is the birthplace of the Haqqani terrorist group. Over the past few years, the Haqqanis have worked with the Taliban as well as with Pakistani and other terrorist groups and played a role in attacks across Afghanistan.

Last Thursday, the US ambassador to Afghanistan, Ryan Crocker, said there is “no question” that the Haqqani network carried out the recent coordinated attacks in Kabul and other cities.

“There is no question in our mind that the Haqqanis were responsible for these attacks. We know where their leadership lives and we know where these plans are made... in Pakistan,” Crocker stated.

In September 2011, US officials accused the Haqqani network of conducting a similar attack on the US Embassy in Kabul as well as a truck bombing on a NATO outpost in the same month that injured more than 70 US soldiers.

Meanwhile, on Saturday the Afghan intelligence service identified the men who were recently caught with 10 tons of explosives as three Pakistanis and two Afghans who were apprehended on the outskirts of Kabul.

They had stuffed 10,000 kilograms (10 tons) of explosives in 400 bags and had hidden the explosive sacks beneath a cargo of potatoes in the back of a Pakistan-registered truck.

The detainees said that they received orders in Pakistan to transfer the explosives from the Pakistani border city of Peshawar to Kabul for use in terrorist attacks, the NDS said in a statement.
Source http://www.presstv.ir/detail/237433.html

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