12:10/19:04:2010

Nearly a thousand acres of opium-producing poppies have been destroyed in a district in eastern Nangarhar province, police said on Monday.
Police and other security agencies started their eradication campaign in Rina and Parchao villages of Lalpura district on Saturday, district police chief, Muhammad Ayub Salangi, told reporters.
The two villages are on the Durand Line the disputed border between Pakistan and Afghanistan .
Salangi said the crop was sown by opponents of the government in connivance with the drug mafia. He said unknown gunmen started firing on police as they were trying to destroy the poppies. There were no casualties.
In the nearby district of Nazian, 15 people had been arrested over the past one month for growing poppies.
Chief of Lalpura district, Essa Khan Zwak, said the district was now clear of poppies and residents of the two villages had pledged not to grow the crop in the future.
Malak Darwesh, a tribal elder from Lalpura district, said that residents now needed welfare projects from the government and international community.
Separately, a spokesman for police headquarters in Nangarhar, Col. Abdul Ghafoor, said several weapons had been handed over to decommission officials in the Rodat district of the province.
He said the police department had collected 281 guns, including several Kalashnikovs, over the past month, and he estimated eight districts in the province would be free of illegal arms in the coming months.