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KABUL — International troops and Afghan police seized 250 tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, enough to make a couple of hundred roadside bombs, the Taliban’s most lethal weapon in what has been the deadliest year of the war, NATO announced Tuesday.
Separately, video footage emerged of insurgents brandishing what appear to be limited stocks of U.S. ammunition in a remote area of eastern Afghanistan where eight Americans died in a battle last month.Sunday’s raids in the southern city of Kandahar appeared to net one of the largest hauls of the war. NATO officials hoped that the fertilizer seizure would hurt Taliban militants, whose homemade bombs have become the biggest killer of allied troops.Acting on a tip, international forces and Afghan police discovered 1,000 100-pound bags of ammonium nitrate fertilizer and 5,000 parts for roadside bombs in a warehouse, the military said. An additional 4,000 100-bags of fertilizer were later found in a nearby compound. The joint forces also made 15 arrests.The seizure included enough fertilizer to make hundreds of bombs, said John Pike, director of the military think tank Globalsecurity.org.Afghanistan is not the only country in which fertilizer is used to make bombs. In 1995, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols detonated a truck packed with 4,800 pounds of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil to destroy a federal building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people.Fertilizer is easily available in agricultural areas of southern Afghanistan, and the Taliban have made bombs from it and other materials.The footage of insurgents handling weapons, including anti-personnel mines with U.S. markings, was broadcast Tuesday on Al Jazeera.Insurgents could employ the ammunition against U.S. and Afghan forces, though the amount shown was not extensive. Still, Taliban propagandists will no doubt use the footage to encourage their supporters.The insurgents said the weapons were from remote outposts in Nuristan province that were abandoned after the battle that killed eight Americans, according to Al Jazeera.
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