Afghanistan’s communist President Hafizullah Amin was lying unconscious in his bed.
A KGB agent who had infiltrated Amin’s staff as a cook had poisoned the president and his ministers during lunch at the Tajbeg presidential palace in Kabul.
RFE/RL: The secret Soviet invasion of Afghanistan
Red Army soldiers cross the Amu Darya river at the Soviet-Afghan border in Termez on February 15, 1989 during Soviet Army withdrawal from Afghanistan. The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December 1979 to shore up the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul and maintained more than 100,000 troops in the country until completing their phased withdrawal in 1989. AFP PHOTO VITALY ARMAND / AFP PHOTO / VITALY ARMAND
