Afghanistan bans fertilizer chemical used in powerful homemade bombs

KABUL (AP) — The Afghan government banned a fertilizer chemical Friday that was used in the devastating Oklahoma City bombing and in most of the homemade explosives that have killed and maimed hundreds of American soldiers here.

NATO troops have seized tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer in raids over the last five months in southern Afghanistan, and the government has been discouraging farmers from using it for years for environmental reasons.

Still, the government believes the new ban will make it more difficult for the Taliban to replenish supplies of ammonium nitrate, which the U.S. think tank Global- security.com says has been used in more than 90 percent of the homemade bombs, the biggest killer of NATO troops in Afghanistan.

NATO announced Friday that another service member was killed in a blast Friday in southern Afghanistan but did not release the victim’s nationality.

Such “fertilizer bombs” also have been used in Iraq in attacks against government security forces. The U.S. military said Friday that seven 55-gallon drums of ammonium nitrate were recovered after a truck bomb only partially detonated during an attack the day before at an Iraqi army checkpoint in the northern city of Mosul.

Earlier this month, Iraqi security forces in Baghdad arrested 25 people and seized 66 gallons of ammonium nitrate.

President Hamid Karzai issued the decree banning the use, production, storage, purchase or sale of ammonium nitrate on the recommendation of Afghan intelligence services and the ministries of agriculture and interior, according to a government statement.

Farmers have one month to turn in their stocks or face prosecution, the statement said.

A number of countries, including Germany, Colombia, Ireland, the Philippines and China, have banned ammonium nitrate fertilizer, and most U.S. states regulate its use after the chemical was used in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, which killed 168 people, and the 2002 nightclub bombings in Bali in which 202 people died.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security requires that businesses that store certain dangerous or combustible chemicals — including ammonium nitrate — provide regular reports on the security of those materials.

Mir Dad Panjshiri, an official in the Afghan Agriculture Ministry, said the government had been discouraging the use of ammonium-nitrate fertilizer for years because urea fertilizer is better-suited to Afghan soils.

He said businessmen began importing ammonium- nitrate fertilizer in large amounts last year, mostly from Central Asia and Pakistan.