Soviet TV Says Rebels Fired at Exiting Convoy

MOSCOW — Soviet troops leading their country’s military withdrawal from Afghanistan came under fire from Muslim rebels on the first leg of their journey from Kabul to the border, Moscow television reported Tuesday.

No casualties were reported and the guerrillas withdrew after bombardment from Soviet defense positions along the road between the Afghan capital and the strategic Salang Tunnel, 70 miles north.

A television correspondent riding with the 270-vehicle convoy indicated that there had been no deaths or injuries in the Monday incident, and his filmed report showed soldiers on the tanks calmly watching the clash as the column kept moving. No foreign reporters are riding with the convoy.

The Moscow broadcast showed the convoy entering the Salang, largely built by Soviet engineers, which takes the main road north through the Hindu Kush mountains.

Near Soviet Border

The convoy, which left the eastern garrison town of Jalalabad on Sunday, set out from Kabul on Monday. The official Tass news agency said the convoy was expected to cross into Soviet territory at the border town of Termez today.

The troops, many of whose tanks and armored vehicles were shown partly covered with red flowers in the television report, are leaving Afghanistan under accords ending more than eight years of Soviet military intervention in the country.

The withdrawal, which Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev has said is intended to heal “a bleeding wound,” will be completed over the coming nine months under the terms of the agreements signed in Geneva in April.

Fighting in South

In Kabul, meanwhile, there were reports of an uneasy calm.

Some officials there spoke of renewed fighting in Kandahar, far to the south, expected to be the next major city evacuated by Soviet troops, but there were no reliable details in Kabul.

Last weekend, the moujahedeen set off a car bomb in central Kabul, killing 16 people, and fired rockets into a suburb, killing four.

But, contrary to expectations, the rebels did not mark May 15, the date set under last month’s U.N.-mediated Geneva agreement for the start of the Soviet pullout, with any demonstration of their presence.