| Authorities have seized four anti-aircraft missiles in house in eastern Afghanistan, a senior Afghan official said Friday. The find was in the same Nangarhar province where suspected Islamic militants this week killed three Afghan soldiers with a land mine. The missiles were discovered Wednesday in a house in Dera Said Mian, 15 miles southeast of Jalalabad, said Afghan Gen. Said Agha Saqib. Saqib said the raid was conducted on a tip-off, but no arrests were made. He said the missiles were U.S.-made, but there were also reports they may have been Russian-made SAM-7 heat-seeking anti-aircraft missiles. It was unclear whether fugitive Taliban or al-Qaida fighters had stored the missiles in the house. Meanwhile, authorities in Nangarhar have arrested 24 people in the search for suspected militants who blew up a vehicle ferrying Afghan soldiers from Jalalabad to Tora Bora, the mountainous region heavily bombed by U.S. forces in December 2001 after the fall of the Taliban government. Two soldiers were killed in the attack Wednesday. A third died of injuries on Thursday. Gen. Haji Musa, head of the 9th Afghan Army Brigade that operates in the area, said Taliban fugitives and their al-Qaida allies were behind the attack, but did not elaborate on whether those detained had any links with either group. |