Afghan and U.S. Forces Find a Vast Cache of Bomb-Making Materials - NYTimes.com

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By DEXTER FILKINS

KABUL, Afghanistan — With fertilizer bombs now the most lethal weapons used against American and NATO soldiers in southern Afghanistan, the bomb-making operation in Kandahar was something close to astonishing.

In a pair of raids on Sunday, Afghan police officers and American soldiers discovered a half-million pounds of ammonium nitrate, a fertilizer that is used in the overwhelming majority of homemade bombs here. About 2,000 bomb-making devices like timers and triggers were also found, and 15 Afghans were detained.

With a typical homemade bomb weighing no more than 60 pounds, the seizure of that much fertilizer — more than 10 tractor-trailer loads — removed potentially thousands of bombs from the streets and trails of southern Afghanistan, officials said.

“You can turn a bag of ammonium nitrate into a bomb in a matter of hours,” said Col. Mark Lee, who leads NATO’s effort to stop the bomb makers in southern Afghanistan. “This is a great first step.”

The operation in the southern city of Kandahar, which was announced Tuesday, is by far the largest of its type. Ammonium nitrate is illegal in Afghanistan; farmers here are allowed to use other types of fertilizer, like those that are urea-based, on their crops. Most of the ammonium nitrate fertilizer in Afghanistan is believed to be imported from Pakistan.

Ammonium nitrate has long been used as both a fertilizer and an explosive. Timothy J. McVeigh and Terry L. Nichols used a 600-pound ammonium nitrate bomb, mixed with fuel oil, to attack the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995. The attack killed 168 people.

The seizure in Kandahar came on the heels of a number of initiatives aimed at taking the fertilizer out of the hands of Taliban insurgents. Until this month, Afghan and NATO officials could seize ammonium nitrate only if it was clearly associated with insurgent activity. Now, they can seize it regardless. If the police or soldiers seize ammonium fertilizer from farmers, they are legally obliged to compensate them for it.

On Sunday, Afghan police officers and American soldiers, acting on intelligence, went first to a compound in the southern part of the city and found 1,000 100-pound bags of ammonium nitrate and 2,000 bomb-making components. They detained 15 people there. They were then led to a second compound a short distance away, where they found 4,000 100-pound bags of the fertilizer.

On Tuesday, Afghans and Americans were still carting away the ammonium nitrate; so far, officials said, they had filled 10 40-foot-long shipping containers with the bags.

The statistics related to homemade bombs tell much of the story of the Afghan war.

The use of homemade bombs has been skyrocketing. Last year, 4,100 bombs either exploded or were discovered beforehand in Afghanistan. So far this year, 6,500 bombs either have been found or have gone off, military officials in Kabul said.

About 60 percent of homemade bombs are discovered here before they explode, officials in Kabul say.

An overwhelming majority of homemade bombs here, about 75 percent, are in southern Afghanistan, in places like the provinces of Kandahar and Helmand. Most of the 17,000 additional troops sent to the country this year by President Obama went to those places.

While homemade bombs are the leading killer of American and other NATO soldiers, about 70 percent of those killed and wounded in such attacks are Afghan, officials said.

“It’s the Afghans who are bearing the brunt,” Colonel Lee said.