Kabul Government

A Soviet media official today confirmed that 12,000 to 15,000 Soviet soldiers died in Afghanistan during the Kremlin's more than eight years of military involvement in that country's civil war. Eduard Rosental, a political observer for the government news agency Novosti, confirmed a recent report by the Paris-based Agence France-Presse news service that 12,000 to 15,000 Soviets had been killed in Afghanistan.

Afghan rebels elected a moderate party leader, Sibghatullah Mojaddidi, as president of an interim government they want to take power in Kabul, state-run Pakistan television said today. It said a rebel consultative council elected a Muslim fundamentalist, Abdurrab Rasul Sayyaf, as prime minister of a government to replace the Soviet-backed administration in the Afghan capital.

Muslim guerrillas shot down a Soviet-built transport plane in Afghanistan last week, killing all 43 people on board, Western diplomats in Pakistan reported. The diplomats, quoting sources they regard as reliable, said an AN-26, a short-range transport plane, was downed by a ground-to-air missile near the provincial capital of Balkh, bordering the Soviet Union. The diplomats said most of the 43 passengers and crew on the flight were military personnel.

A group of tearful Soviet mothers, hoping for reunions with soldier sons held prisoner by Afghan guerrillas, arrived in Islamabad today on a special plane from Moscow. Two of the women said they had been promised that their sons, Andrei Lopukh and Valery Prokoppchuk, would be handed over by a guerrilla group in a few days, following Pakistani efforts to win their release. Three others, armed with old photographs, are on a mission for any news of men missing during the Afghan war.

Afghan guerrillas shot down a transport plane as it was coming in to land at Kunduz airport near the Soviet border, killing all 15 people on the aircraft, the official Tass news agency said on Monday. The Afghan plane, an Antonov AN-26 carrying six crew members and nine passengers, crashed in flames after being hit by rocket fire over the northern Afghan town on Sunday. It was the second transport plane shot down this month. Six people were killed Sept.