Further to Cargocults first message.
The aircraft mentioned in your first message
was a Turbolev 154 passenger jet. On very
short final a mujeheddin, sitting in a hole, shot
a RPG rocket launcher vertically and hit the cone of the aircraft. The cone popped off and the first officer broke a leg - nevertheless they
were cool enough to land the aircraft directly
and no one else were hurt.
The aircraft was sitting on the tarmac from early june till early august when it was hit again. We were at the time flying for UN and we
used to park the aircraft next to the damaged Turbolev. One morning when we had done all preparations for our flight and began taxiing,
we heard a loud crack and thought we had hit something, but when we looked back we could see the Turbolev on fire and all our crew
scattered around the tarmac. Once airborne we could see that a rocket had hit the left wing
next to our parking spot! We had escapped a
very close attempt to hit us. When we got on
the radio (local UN walki talkies) our engineer
assured us that all our local crew were safe.
We were pretty scared for the rest of our flight
to Masari Sharif.
Due to fuel shortage in Kabul the aircraft did not have any fuel in the wings and the damage were limited. The rocket exploded inside the wing and probably saved a lot of lives to the
people standing around watching us take off!
Just one more comment about how they can
fly heavy jets out of Kabul. They can't but they do! These people take high risk either by ignorance or by faith in their god.