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Blast kills in Afghan village

KABUL, Afghanistan - Explosive materials at a warlord's home detonated in a remote Afghan village Monday, flattening nearby houses and a mosque and killing at least 26 people.

There was disagreement over the type of explosives that detonated, with villagers saying they were for building roads. Afghan officials insisted the house hid an illegal weapons cache, highlighting the danger from old arms piled up in a quarter-century of war and the task of disarming commanders wary of rivals and the country's U.S.-backed government.

By late evening, a handful of residents were still combing the tangle of mud, stones and broken roof beams from at least four family homes. Pieces of clothing and crockery could be seen by lamplight, but no wall was left standing in an area 100 yards wide.

Mohammed Razek, a shepherd, said he rushed from his home to pull victims from the debris and help more than 30 injured survivors.

Razek, 32, said 26 people were killed, including 23 relatives of the commander, and three others were missing. More than a dozen of the dead were children. The warlord was not in the house at the time. Officials earlier said 28 were killed and up to 70 injured.

Residents said the commander, a former anticommunist and anti-Taliban leader called Jalal Bashgah, recently brought explosives to improve the rough road up the valley. Razek insisted that he surrendered all his arms to the government.

But Interior Ministry spokesman Latfullah Mashal said the blast was caused by a cache hidden in a bunker under Bashgah's house.

The Baghlan police chief, Gen. Fazeluddin Ayar, said that the cache included rockets as well as explosives and that the commander had given up only a portion of weapons hoarded "a long time ago" to the United Nations, which has so far demobilized more than 50,000 former militiamen.

He said Bashgah's was among a half-dozen houses flattened by the blast.

That program as well as the disposal activities of U.S. and NATO troops, who report the discovery of weapons caches almost daily, have rounded up a vast arsenal, much of it left over from the resistance against occupying Soviet forces during the 1980s.

Peter Babbington, head of the U.N. program, said there were still "many, many thousands of tons" more scattered across the country. While the exact quantity was uncertain, there were sure to be future accidents, he said.

Collection efforts are now focused on the north, but in cities such as Mazar-e-Sharif and Herat, rather than the remote valleys of Baghlan, he said.

Mohammed Yusuf Faiez, the director of Baghlan's only hospital, said villagers described being blown off their feet as they walked home from morning prayer, apparently at the mosque next to the commander's house.

[Last modified May 3, 2005, 01:19:05]