Soviet-Afghan troops launch an offensive in the provinces of Konarha, Nangarhar, and Paktia in eastern Afghanistan and Nimruz and Herat in the west, part of a move designed to cut off guerrilla supply routes.

A UN report on human rights in Afghanistan accuses Soviet forces of "bombarding villages, destroying food supplies, massacring civilians, and disregarding the Geneva convention."

According to resistance sources in Pakistan, some 400 Soviet and Afghan troops are killed when a series of chain-reaction explosions triggered by a time bomb engulfs a military convoy at Ollamd, near the Salang tunnel.

Western diplomats claim that several hundred civilians have been killed in late March during Soviet-Afghan attacks in the provinces of Laghman in the east, Qonduz and Samangan in the north, and Herat.

The UN special representative for Afghanistan, Cordovez, shuttles between separate rooms in the UN building in Geneva, meeting alternately with Afghan Foreign Minister Dost and his Pakistani counterpart, Khan.

However, the offensive, described by area experts as among the biggest since the Soviet intervention in 1979, brings the war closer to the Pakistani border, a fact that worries Islamabad.