Afghan Rebels Bomb Russian Evacuation Jets

KABUL, Afghanistan Rebels ignored a temporary truce Friday andfired rockets that set a Russian evacuation plane ablaze, strandingRussia's ambassador and other diplomats and their families.

Four Russian commandos aboard the plane were injured.

Two military transport planes escaped the bombardment andferried 120 Russian Embassy staffers, their wives and children out ofKabul with little more than the possessions they could carry.

The planes circled the mountains that ring the city, spewingdozens of flares designed to deflect heat-seeking missiles fired atthe aircraft.

Russia's ambassador to Pakistan, Victor Yakunin, appealed forhelp during an hourlong meeting with Foreign Secretary ShaharyarMohammad Khan on Friday. Pakistan has contacts both with the formerIslamic rebels who now make up Afghanistan's government and with theHezb-e-Islami group fighting the government.

Moscow decided Thursday to close its mission in Kabul after atleast 14 rebel rockets slammed into the embassy, wounding two people.Earlier this month, two Russians were killed and one was wounded whenrockets hit the compound. The truce permitting the evacuation was tohave begun at 5 a.m. Friday.

The government has so far refused to comment on the rocketattack, but a spokesman for Hezb-e-Islami denied involvement.

However, witnesses said the rockets came from the southern edgeof the Afghan capital, where Hezb-e-Islami troops are entrenched.

Hezb-e-Islami leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar has sworn to destroythe capital unless the government of President Burhanuddin Rabbiniexpels a militia that once backed the hated communist regime butproved crucial in toppling it in April.

Steady rocketing in recent weeks has rained chaos anddestruction on the city, forcing one-third of its 1.5 millionresidents to flee and causing severe shortages of food, fuel andmedicine.

About 50 Russians, including Ambassador Yevgeny Ostrovenko andother senior embassy personnel, were forced to stay behind Friday when a rocket slammed into a fuel storage depot and ignitedthe wing of a third plane. Dozens of passengers were preparing toboard.

They were hustled onto a waiting bus that raced them back to thesafety of an airport bunker, where they and pro-government militiawatched the plane burn.