Militants planning 'massive' attacks arrested in Kabul

Afghan security forces have arrested five militants suspected of planning large-scale attack in Kabul, the BBC reported on Saturday. A truck with 10,000 kilograms of explosives was seized from the men last Sunday, a spokesman for Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security (NDS) said. The arrests, which came amid a series of attacks by Taliban insurgents in Kabul and elsewhere, were kept secret because of the sensitive nature of the operation, spokesman Shafiqullah Tahiri The group was planning to assassinate the country's second vice-president, Mohammad Khalili, and stage large-scale attacks targeting crowded areas in the capital, Tahiri said. About 400 sacks of explosives were found hidden under piles of potatoes. Three of the men were Pakistan citizens, while the other two were Afghans, al Jazeera cited another NDS spokesman as saying. He said the Pakistanis were linked with their country's main intelligence agency, the ISI, while one of the Afghans was allegedly a Taliban commander.