A major Soviet-led offensive overran a valley north of Kabul that had been an Afghan guerrilla stronghold for years, according to an official broadcast from Afghanistan. It was the sixth attempt, since Soviet forces entered Afghanistan in late 1979, to clear insurgents from the Panjshir Valley, which is roughly 70 miles long and runs northeast from a point 50 miles north of Kabul, the capital. The drive, intelligence sources in Washington and London said, has been backed by high-level saturation bombing, the heaviest air strikes against the insurgents to date. Truce Ended in January
The intelligence experts said they could not entirely accept the Afghan statement that the rebels had been driven from the valley. But the experts said they believed the Russians, after the past setbacks, would not allow the Afghans to make sweeping statements if they were not generally true. The objective was the elimination of guerrillas controlled by Ahmad Shah Masood, whose 12-month truce with the authorities expired in January. The offensive reportedly began in the first week of April, and the air strikes were added beginning on Saturday. The use of such measures was described by a State Department spokesman, Alan Romberg, as “an escalation of the destructive and brutal anti-civilian warfare in Afghanistan.” Mr. Romberg and military sources said several hundred Soviet vehicles were moving into the valley.
The Soviet-Afghan advances, according to Western intelligence, were the result of the air strikes and the use of a Soviet mechanized division of 14,000 men, 250 tanks and 150 armored personnel carriers together with 60 to 80 helicopter gunships. The air strikes were carried out by Tu-16 bombers, whose NATO code name is Badger, and Su-24 ground attack planes, dubbed Fencer by the alliance. They began attacks on Saturday on Panjshir villages suspected of harboring rebels and on guerrillas caught in the open. The Badgers bombed from high altitudes while the Fencers went in closer to the ground. The Afghan Army’s role appears to have been limited. Intelligence reports reaching Washington and London emphasize the unreliability of Afghan troops in combat. The assumption is that Afghan forces are being employed to consolidate Soviet gains and guard lines of communications.
Diplomats in New Delhi report that the air assault was prompted by rebel attacks on a bridge just south of the Salang Tunnel, 55 miles north of Kabul, on the supply route from the Soviet Union. The insurgents first said the bridge had been destroyed; later reports said 20 yards of the concrete structure had been blown up. Military sources believe that the Soviet offensive was decided on during the winter and planned for early April. The attack on the bridge and lesser attacks in the area were described as irritants that might have accelerated the start of the Soviet drive. Sources in New Delhi, London and Washington put the number of Soviet troops in Afghanistan as higher than 108,000, which is the accepted figure. The increase may be due to the rotation of units, Washington sources said.
A cease-fire threatened to disintegrate into another round of heavy fighting in Beirut as President Amin Gemayel continued his effort to form a new government that would give more power to Lebanon’s Muslims. The fighting between Christian and Muslim militias was the worst since cease-fire observers were deployed last week along the line separating East and West Beirut. The government reported at least two people killed, but observers in the capital suggested that the death toll was higher.
A huge landslide swept over a major railway line in the Caucasus Mountains, damaging a bridge and forcing about 25,000 Soviet rail passengers to finish their journeys by bus, the government newspaper Izvestia reported. It said that no one was injured. The slide struck just before a train from Moscow bound for the Georgian capital of Tbilisi reached the area, Izvestia reported.
Runoff elections will be required for 16 of Tehran’s 30 seats in the 270-member Parliament, the national press agency said today in a report received in London. No candidate received a majority of the votes in those contests in the election April 14. No date has been set for the runoff, the agency said.
Morocco announced that it is breaking diplomatic relations with El Salvador and Costa Rica because those countries moved their embassies in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Following urgings by a committee of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, Egypt has already cut ties with the two Central American countries. Israel regards Jerusalem as its capital but. because of the disputed nature of the city-part of which Israel captured during the 1967 war-most nations maintain their embassies in Tel Aviv.
Britain deported a Libyan radical who was described as the chief personal representative there of Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi, the Libyan leader. The representative, Abdul Khadir Baghdadi, who was placed on a Libyan Arab Airlines flight to Tripoli, was a member of the four-man group that took over the Libyan Embassy in February.
Soviet President Konstantin U. Chernenko has some new ideas for ending the East-West deadlock on nuclear weapons. Italian Foreign Minister Giulio Andreotti reported after meeting the Soviet leader in Moscow. Andreotti declined to go into details on what the ideas are. but he said “there now exists an opportunity for dialogue and a search for understanding.”
Coal miners in the Nottinghamshire region of central England returned to work despite union calls last week for a walkout in support of a nationwide strike. Most of the 9,300 workers at seven mines were back on the job after the Easter holiday. In all. 40,000 miners in the 183,000-strong National Union of Mineworkers have refused to join the six-week-old stoppage. Strike leaders are pressing for a showdown with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher over plans to shut down 20 to 25 unprofitable mines.
More than 1,000 demonstrators marking the 69th anniversary of the start of the massacre of Armenians in Turkey marched to the Turkish Embassy in Athens, Greece today and burned a Turkish flag there. The extremist Armenian Secret Army issued a statement vowing to continue attacks on “those who conspire against our people.” The group has taken responsibility for many terrorist attacks against Turkish diplomats and their families. At issue is the massacre of Armenians living in Turkey during World War I, and the unwillingness of modern Turkey to acknowledge responsibility for the crimes carried out under the Ottoman rulers. The demonstrators shouted “Turkish murderers!” and broke through police lines on the road to the embassy, the police said. No arrests were reported. The demonstrators pasted a note to the embassy door calling for “recognition of the genocide of the Armenians and return of Armenian lands,” an Armenian spokesman said.
A special assembly of the International Civil Aviation Organization began work today on proposals to try to eliminate the possibility of such incidents as the downing of a South Korean jetliner by the Soviet Union. “The purpose of the different proposals presented to this assembly is to embody in the convention a specific provision that states must refrain from resorting to the use of force against civil aircraft,” said Assad Kotaite of Jordan, who is president of the governing council of the United Nations organization. Mr. Kotaite did not refer to the downing of the Korean Air Lines jetliner, in which 269 people died, and he urged the delegates to look forward rather than backward. Three weeks of working sessions have been scheduled for the delegates to agree on an amendment to the group’s charter.
El Salvador’s army has prepared a message for the next president telling him to stay out of military affairs, senior officers said in San Salvador. The message will be given to the winner of the May 6 runoff presidential election, the officers said. Diplomatic sources said the intent is to limit presidential authority, reserving for the military its traditionally dominant role. The letter specifies that any negotiations with leftist rebels will be up to the military, the sources added.
Price rioting took the lives of at least 26 people in the Dominican Republic as mobs battled the police in a second day of protests over price increases on all imported goods and many basic foodstuffs. The Government closed all schools and shut down a radio station.
Maoist guerrillas in Peru hanged a leftist Mayor, shot a Lieutenant Governor dead and briefly captured a radio station in attacks on Sunday, the Civil Guard has announced. The civil guard said Shining Path guerrillas made the attacks to mark the fourth anniversary of the start of their rebellion. About a dozen masked guerrillas seized a radio station at Huanta, 50 miles north of Ayacucho, and broadcast a 30-minute taped message declaring “the guerrilla army is not dead and will begin new attacks,” the civil guard said today. The civil guard said Monday night that about 40 guerrillas took over the village of Huamanguilla and hanged Mayor Juan Contreras, 39 years old, after a mock trial. A former health official also was hanged, the civil guard said. Lieutenant Governor Carlos Barbozo was killed in the town of La Compania by another guerrilla unit, the civil guard said Monday.
Argentine Labor Minister Antonio Mucci resigned, admitting failure to reform the nation’s labor unions, which are controlled by opposition Perónists. It was the first resignation in the Cabinet of President Raul Alfonsin, whose inauguration in December ended more than seven years of military rule. Alfonsin needs union support to enact austerity measures necessary for economic recovery.
About 500 people occupied the main lobby of Brazil’s Congress building in Brasilia for six hours in defiance of emergency decrees and shouted slogans demanding direct presidential elections. Congress is to vote today on an opposition amendment to reinstate direct election of the president by the voters. Under the current system, an electoral college controlled by the ruling party of President Joao Baptista Figueiredo elects the president.
Consumer prices rose only two-tenths of 1 percent last month, the Labor Department said. It was the smallest increase since December. For the 12 months through March, the Government said, prices increased 4.7 percent. Economists attributed the slim March increase to declines in the prices of food and heating oil, reversing weather-generated increases earlier in the winter.
President Reagan leaves Hawaii for Guam, on his way to China.
Walter F. Mondale urged a ban on military uses of space. In a major speech in Cleveland, Mr. Mondale said that President Reagan’s proposal to develop missile defenses in space would “dangerously destabilize” relations between Washington and Moscow. The former Vice President told a crowd at Case Western Reserve University, “If Mr. Reagan is re-elected he will feel no pressure to stop the arms race.”
A space-based antimissile system is “so remote that it should not serve as the basis of public expectation or national policy,” according to a study made public by the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment. The report said that deployment of missile defenses is prohibited by the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty signed by Washington and Moscow.
Gary Hart, stressing the economy, outlined proposals he said would create an economy of “opportunity.” Speaking in Cleveland, Senator Hart criticized President Reagan’s economic policies as “reckless” and Walter F. Mondale’s policies as representing “paralyzing commitments to special interests” that would create a “bailout economy.”
A tire-wear standard was upheld by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. The court ruled that the Reagan Administration acted improperly last year when it suspended the requirement that the estimated mileage life be embossed on the tire’s side. A U.S. appeals court accused the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration of flouting the law in taking 13 years to issue congressionally mandated automotive tire-grading standards and then suspending them after three years. The standards were designed to provide comparative information on the tread wear of various makes of tires and would “save consumers hundreds of millions of dollars each year in buying better tires at lower prices.” according to Clarence Ditlow, director of the Center for Auto Safety. The Reagan Administration suspended the grading requirements in 1983. The Washington, D.C., court granted a request by consumers’ groups for a review of that suspension.
Major cities faced sharp cuts in federal funding for summer jobs for youths because the money is tied up in the congressional debate over aid for Central America. The Senate has passed legislation that would make sure cities get at least 90% of what they received last year, when a jobs bill increased the annual program by $100 million. The legislation was attached to an urgent supplemental bill designed to pay for emergency food aid for Africa. But, in addition, measures were attached that would pay for military and economic assistance for El Salvador and covert aid to anti-government forces in Nicaragua. The legislation must now go to conference with the House and, so far, no meetings of the conference committee have been scheduled.
A Chicago man shot his wife and two children to death, then ran down the stairs of a South Side high-rise housing project firing at “everyone he encountered.” police said. A bystander was killed and four persons were wounded before police shot the gunman to death in a parking lot. Officers said a family dispute sparked the shooting spree by Charles Hunt, 37. Police said that Hunt fatally shot his wife, Betty, 50, his son, Charles Jr., 17, and his daughter, Linda, 15, in the family’s 23rd-floor apartment. He then went to the 18th floor and killed Gloria Carney, 49.
A Naval Academy midshipman resigned because she was pregnant in what is believed to be the first such case since females were admitted eight years ago. Regulations at the Annapolis, Maryland, academy prohibit midshipmen to either be pregnant or cause pregnancy, said spokesman Dennis Boxx. Two male midshipmen resigned in the last two years because they violated the prohibition against causing pregnancy, he added.
Rampaging teenage prisoners at the state detention center in Salem, West Virginia, smashed windows, destroyed doors and repeatedly escaped for the second day in a row, authorities said. The minimum-security Industrial Home for Youth has been racked by increasing violence since the suspension of three guards accused of beating inmates earlier this year.
Industry officials said Monday that an ice jam on the St. Clair River was costing Great Lakes shippers up to $1.7 million a day and causing some vessels to wait more than a week to get through. Seventy-five freighters and ore carriers are awaiting passage at both ends of the 40-mile river, which is a major link between lakes Huron and Erie. “For the whole industry, we’re estimating the loss at $1.5 million to $1.7 million a day,” said Glen Nekvasil, a spokesman for the Cleveland-based Lake Carriers’ Association.
A miniature cold war ended when the Glen Cove, New York, City Council voted to lift a 2-year-old ban against Soviet diplomats’ using the Long Island town’s beaches, golf course and tennis courts. The ban had been instituted because of charges that the Soviets were using their 36-acre retreat to eavesdrop on area defense industries and complaints that they paid no property taxes or fees to support the recreational facilities. In retaliation, the Soviet Union had barred U.S. diplomats from Diplomat Beach near Moscow. The Justice Department had asked a federal judge to overturn the city’s ban and the city countersued the government. Both of these suits will now be dropped.
The Mayor of Providence, R.I., Vincent A. Cianci Jr., remained a focus of attention. On Monday, he became a convicted felon when a judge gave him a suspended sentence of five years for assault with a dangerous weapon in the beating of a man. Hours later, Mayor Cianci pledged to resign, but yesterday he indicated he might run for Mayor in a special election in 10 weeks. The city charter compels a convicted felon to relinquish public office, but it does not bar a felon who has served no prison time from running for office.
A Federal investigative committee says Emory University should not be penalized for the fraudulent work of a researcher in the 1970’s because the school has taken steps to police itself. The committee, appointed by the National Institutes of Health, reported Monday on fraudulent research by John R. Darsee, who was a medical resident and research fellow in cardiology at Emory from 1974 to 1979. The committee admonished Emory for not assigning an instructor to oversee all of Dr. Darsee’s research. A similar investigation at Harvard University, where Dr. Darsee also falsified research, resulted in that school’s being forced to return Federal funds used to underwrite some of the studies. The National Institutes of Health also barred Dr. Darsee from grants or contracts in Government-sponsored work for 10 years. Last year Emory retracted eight scientific papers and 43 abstracts, or research descriptions, which Dr. Darsee wrote, saying he reported data from experiments that never took place and distorted data from other experiments.
Women posing as prostitutes are luring hotel guests to their rooms, where they use knockout drops to put their victims to sleep while they rob them, the police said today. Officials fear that some of the estimated one million tourists expected in southern California for the Summer Olympics could be victimized by such traps, which have been linked to two deaths in New York. Ten cases have been reported in the area over the past few months.
A strong earthquake shook the San Francisco Bay region. The temblor was centered about 12 miles southeast of San Jose, where the greatest damage occurred, and was measured at about 6.1 on the Richter scale. Minor damage was reported across a wide area.
Customs officials seized an airliner in Miami after finding three pounds of cocaine in the L-1011’s electronics section. The Eastern Airlines jet was on the way to New York from Lima, Peru, and Panama City. A United States Customs Service official said the cocaine was discovered in a section of the plane accessible only to employees.
The Tigers score 3 runs in the 9th inning to come from behind and beat the Twins, 6–5. Lou Whitaker’s 2-out single drives home the winner. The rally gives Jack Morris (4–0) his 11th straight win over Minnesota going back to June 1981.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1162.90 (+13.40).
Born:
Frans Nielsen, Danish NHL centre (NHL All-Star, 2017; New York Islanders, Detroit Red Wings), in Herning, Denmark.
Brett Sterling, NHL left wing (Atlanta Thrashers, Pittsburgh Penguins, St. Louis Blues), in Los Angeles, California.
Victor Worsley, NFL linebacker (Indianapolis Colts), in Battleboro, North Carolina.
Michael League, American Grammy Award-winning jazz-funk fusion and world music bassist, composer, and bandleader (Snarky Puppy), in Long Beach, California.
Tyson Ritter, American singer and songwriter (The All-American Rejects), in Stillwater, Oklahoma.
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