Reuters

Oct. 27

— KABUL (Reuters) - A loud bomb blast shook a U.S. special forces base in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar early Sunday, but there appeared to be no casualties and little damage, residents said.

The blast was triggered by explosives placed in a tea jug in the yard of a huge compound that once belonged to Mullah Mohammad Omar, the leader of the Taliban regime toppled from power last year.

"After the big explosion, we heard shooting inside the compound for several minutes," Rasouldad, a Kandahar resident, said. "Apparently the U.S. soldiers inside the compound thought they had come under attack from outside."

Another resident added, "Nobody has been killed or wounded as far as we know. The building windows have been broken and there is some more damage, but we don't know for sure the extent of the damage because we are not allowed to enter."

Afghan and U.S. officials were not available for comment on the blast in the same city where U.S. special forces saved President Hamid Karzai from a September 5 assassination bid blamed on a Taliban sympathizer.

U.S. special forces recently moved into the compound in the center of the city. It is guarded by Afghan soldiers.

One Afghan soldier in Kandahar said the U.S. military suspected the guards could have been behind the attack.

Kandahar was the main bastion of the fundamentalist Taliban which sheltered Osama bin Laden, accused by Washington of masterminding the attacks on the United States last year.

About 8,000 American soldiers are in Afghanistan pursuing remnants of the Taliban and bin Laden's al Qaeda network. Kandahar airport has become one of the main U.S. bases. Elsewhere, a boy was killed in an explosion in the border town of Spin Boldak, about 60 miles southeast of Kandahar, a district official said.

He said the explosion was caused by a bomb hidden in a bag of grapes and resulted in a sizeable crater, and added that police were investigating.

-- Anonymous, October 27, 2002