U.S. estimates Russians lost 100 in Afghanistan

Press, 14 April 1979, Page 9

U.S. estimates Russians lost 100 in Afghanistan

NZPA-Reuter Washington

United States Intelligence officials estimate that as many as 100 Soviet military advisers may have been killed in Afghanistan in the last month in fighting between Government troops and guerrillas. The officials say some Intelligence estimates put the number of Soviet personnel in Afghanistan as high as 3000. with more than 1000 in military roles.

In addition to serving as advisers, Soviet personnel were said to be playing a growing role in the fighting, including flying helicopters and fighter planes and directing artillery fire. The officials support reports from Kabul that in recent fighting in Herat, 640 km west of the capital, insurgents killed 16 Soviet civilians, including two women, and mutilated their bodies. Uniformed Soviet troops

have not intervened in the conflict, and the Soviet military advisers now in the country are said to be wearing either Afghan uniforms or civilian clothes. The officials say Moscow recently stepped up delivery of military equipment to the Afghan Government. They say Moscow has given several warnings to Pakistan in the last two weeks about intervening in the conflict. They say that in response, the Carter Administration privately told the Pakistan Government recently that Washington intended to live up to the security agreements contained in a 1959 understanding between the two countries. The Soviet new’s agency’, Tass. has said mutineers in Herat have massacred civilians loyal to the Marxist Government and looted and set fire to property there. Tass gave its first detailed account of last month’s Herat fighting in a report

from Kabul which reneweu Soviet charges that Pakis-tan-based Muslim guerrillas were behind the uprising.

The head of a State commission investigating the mutiny, Mr Saleh Peiruz, was quoted by Tass as saying the Muslim rebels “at first managed to mislead a part of the population. “An epidemic of murders, looting, and arson raged in Herat for three days. More than 120 (People’s Democratic Party) activists and members "of their families were brutally murdered.

“The mass shooting of ‘sympathisers’, and cruel massacres of those citizens who refused to join the mutiny were then started,” the report said.

Tass said the situation in Herat had now returned to normal after the army suppressed the mutiny; Large caches of United States and Chinese-made weapons had been found in the city, it said.