- Taliban launch tank, rocket
attacks on Buddha statues
- (AFP)
KABUL (March 2, 2001): Afghanistan's
ancient Buddha statues in central Bamiyan province are under a barrage of rocket and tank
shells from the ruling Taliban militia, official and opposition sources said Friday. They
said Taliban fighters started attacking the two giant stone Buddhas, dating back almost
2,000 years, with rockets, tank shells and even automatic rifles.
"They have started attacking the
Buddhas with guns and tank shells -- with whatever arms they are carrying," a militia
source said, declining to be named. "People are firing at them out of their own
sentiments."
Ignoring international protests, fanatical
Taliban soldiers on Thursday started destroying all statues throughout the country in
compliance with a decree issued on Monday by their Supreme Leader Mulla Mohammad Omar.
Omar said the decision was in line with a
fatwa from local Islamic clerics designed to prevent the worshipping of "false
idols."
Minister of Information and Culture
Qudratullah Jamal said historic statues in the Kabul museum and elsewhere in the provinces
of Ghazni, Herat, Jalalabad and Kandahar were also being destroyed.
Opposition official Mohammad Bahram,
speaking from the western mountains of Bamiyan which are controlled by anti-Taliban
groups, confirmed the attack on the Buddhas.
"We have also heard reports that the
they are attacking them with rockets and tank shells," he said.
The Afghan Islamic Press news agency said
on Friday in a report monitored in Islamabad that Taliban militia had also gathered
explosives around the two ancient Buddha statues in order to blow them up.
The most famous of Afghanistan's statues
are the two Buddhas carved into a sandstone mountain in central Bamiyan province.
Afghanistan was a centre of Buddhism
before Islamic armies came 14 centuries ago. The largest of the two is the biggest
standing Buddha in the world at 165 feet tall.