Wed Mar 10, 7:03 AM ET
By ANGUS SHAW, Associated Press Writer
HARARE, Zimbabwe - Zimbabwe authorities alleged that a cargo plane impounded in Harare on suspicion of carrying 64 mercenaries was hired by a South African mercenary organization and British special forces, state television reported.
The television said Tuesday that investigations in Zimbabwe showed the plane, impounded late Sunday at the main Harare international airport, was linked to a South African firm known as "Executive Outcomes" that in the past hired mostly former apartheid era South African soldiers for mercenary and security work across Africa.
The television quoted Zimbabwe Home Affairs Minister Kembo Mohadi saying British SAS, or Special Air Service, forces were believed also to have been involved.
He did not elaborate.
No comment was immediately available from Britain or South Africa on those charges.
State television said the plane was carrying 20 South African nationals and groups of Angolans, Congolese, Namibians and one Zimbabwean carrying a South African passport.
The crew of the aging Boeing 727 claimed the plane was headed for the central African nations of the Congo and Burundi and was carrying mineral mining personnel.
Earlier, South Africa's ambassador to Zimbabwe, Jerry Ndou, was attempting to verify the status of those on board the plane, the South African Foreign Affairs Ministry said.
"Should the allegations that those South Africans on board are involved in mercenary activities prove true, this would amount to a serious breach of the Foreign Military Assistance Act, which expressly prohibits the involvement of South Africans in military activities outside South Africa without the due authorization of the National Conventional Arms Control Committee," Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad said in a statement released late Monday.
The small west African state of Equatorial Guinea, where rich oil deposits were recently discovered, has said it is investigating reports foreign mercenaries were being recruited earlier this year to overthrow the government.
Zimbabwe state television on Monday broadcast footage of a white plane with a blue stripe containing satellite telephones, radios, backpacks, sleeping bags, hiking boots, an inflatable raft, bolt cutters and what appeared to be a can of Mace. No weapons were shown.
The plane and its passengers were taken to a nearby military airfield, the station said.
The plane's registration number, N4610, is assigned to Dodson Aviation Inc. of Ottawa, Kan., in the United States. However, company director Robert Dodson said it had sold the aircraft about a week ago.
By STEPHEN GRAHAM, Associated Press Writer
KABUL, Afghanistan - Militants attacked a remote U.S. base in eastern Afghanistan with rockets and heavy machine-guns, sparking a battle that killed a bystander, the military said Wednesday. The main American base in the south also came under rocket assault.
At least a dozen guerrillas assailed the outpost at Nangalam, about 100 miles east of the capital Kabul, in Kunar province early on Tuesday morning.
The attackers shot about 20 rockets then opened fire on the base, which houses about 100 U.S. Marines and special forces, but inflicted no American casualties, military spokesman Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty said.
U.S. forces responded with gunfire and called in an A-10 ground attack aircraft.
"We discovered blood moving into the hills, so it appeared that some of the enemy were wounded," Hilferty said.
Hilferty said an Afghan civilian wounded in the crossfire died in hospital in the provincial capital Asadabad.
Kunar Gov. Fazel Akbar said another man was injured and that investigators were trying to establish if he was a militant.
Kunar is the northernmost of a string of troubled Afghan provinces along the border with Pakistan where the 13,000-strong U.S.-led coalition is focusing its campaign against militants.
At the southern end of that arc, rockets were fired early Wednesday at the U.S. base at the airport near Kandahar, Afghanistan's second city.
Khalid Pashtun, spokesman for the Kandahar provincial government, said three rockets were fired into an empty area of the base grounds.
But Hilferty said there were two rockets and that they landed "several kilometers (miles)" from the airfield.
There were no reports of injuries.
Pashtun blamed remnants of the Taliban regime ousted by a U.S.-led assault in late 2001 for the attack.
Taliban militants are believed to have teamed up with remnants of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network and fighters loyal to Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar to fight the U.S.-backed government of Hamid Karzai.
At least 140 people have died in violence in Afghanistan so far this year, including aid workers and government employees as well as Afghan and international troops and militants.
Tuesday's assault was "relatively large-scale" for Kunar, Hilferty said. "The people of that area have liked us very much, but that appears to be an area where Hekmatyar forces are operating."
Kunar and the neighboring Chitral region of Pakistan form an area of deep forested valleys and snowcapped mountains where both Hekmatyar and bin Laden have at times been rumored to hold out.
U.S. commanders have vowed to capture the pair and also Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar this year, and are focusing their efforts along the rugged border regions.
___
Associated Press writer Noor Khan in Kandahar contributed to this report.