Tass denies Monitor story on massacre of Afghans
| Moscow
the Soviet news agency Tass has denied a report by The Christian Science Monitor that Soviet-led Afghan soldiers massacred an estimated 1,170 unarmed men and boys last April. Nikolai Repin, a Tass commentator, said that in spreading the "monstrous misinformation," Western news media had shattered all records in their anti-Soviet propaganda campaign.
The report said nearly the entire male population of the town of Kerala in eastern Afghanistan was killed for giving aid to Afghan rebels.
The Monitor said it was the first reported case corroborated by eyewitnesses of a mass military reprisal against Afghanistan's civilian population in two years of fighting.
