KABUL, Afghanistan (EPN) -- The former Soviet Union's sprawling embassy complex is now dilapidated, damaged and overrun by thousands of squatters who have erected ragged curtains and bricks to create a warren of hovels.

Afghan children screaming and scrambling for alms while shouting threats and obscenities greeted a foreign reporter at the bullet-scarred compound.

A gaping hole caused by a rocket in a back wall formed a play area for the raucous children who scampered over the wall's mangled iron support beams and fallen chunks of cement.

After entering through the jagged hole in the wall, it was virtually impossible to recognize Moscow's former embassy.

The diplomatic compound's hulking, multi-story buildings had become a slum for thousands of destitute people who washed clothes, chopped food and did other chores as if they were in an Afghan village.

Older boys immediately began throwing rocks at any Afghan females who happened to be around, forcing them to hide. Some strict Muslims forbid women and girls to be seen by strangers.

The former Soviet Union's main embassy building is graced by a 1960s-style curved architectural flourish atop its entrance.

Inside the embassy are scenes from medieval times.

All doors and windows have been blown out by explosions or stolen.

The embassy's downstairs reception area is now an open garage-like space, dark and littered with trash.

Walls are covered with splattered stains, scrawled words and crude charcoal drawings of machine guns, tanks, people and indecipherable shapes.

Upstairs, past the square holes of former windows, squatters have taken over the diplomats' offices and built flimsy brick walls to hurriedly section off small squalid living quarters.

Poorer people stitched together filthy rags which were held up by tattered ropes in an effort to curtain off places to sleep and eat.

Some girls, dressed in cotton outfits with purple and red floral designs, bravely peered through the ragged curtains.

But they darted away when a swarm of unkempt boys raised their fists and yelled.

Every building on the embassy's spacious property housed men, women and children dwelling in wretched conditions.

Every wall was smashed or pock-marked by years of machine gun and rocket fire in this southwest Karte Seh sector of Kabul where civil war decimated nearly all other buildings.

"More than 23,000 people live here," said Amin Nullah in an interview, gesturing to several tall apartment blocks cordoned off into tiny rooms and packed with people.

It was impossible to confirm the total population in the embassy complex, but Mr. Nullah repeatedly insisted 23,000 people occupied the multi-story apartment blocks and other buildings.

By sectioning off every apartment and office into numerous small, personal spaces and cramming in as many people as possible, it was conceivable more than 20,000 people resided in a myriad of cramped quarters.

"There is no electricity, but we have water," added Mr. Nullah, who described himself as their "representative."

"They have been living here for the past two years and six months. Everyone lives here for free."

Mr. Nullah -- a fat, loud, bossy man who wore a dirty gray turban -- then turned angry and insisted foreigners were not allowed to visit the former Soviet embassy.

In addition to the main embassy building and several tall apartment blocks which previously housed Moscow's diplomats and their families, the Soviets also left a playground where Afghan children now amused themselves on swings and colorful, moveable metal rides.

A basketball court was equipped with hoops, but no nets.

At the edge of the embassy compound, a few vendors parked rickety wooden pushcarts offering vegetables and other items for sale.

In December 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan.

More than 115,000 Soviet troops occupied this country for a decade, fighting against U.S.-backed Afghan guerrillas in a war which killed an estimated one million people.

During the 1980s, Moscow's embassy swelled.

Soviet diplomats, military officers, technical advisers, aid workers, spies and apparatchiks tried in vain to install a Marxist regime and defeat the Islamic guerrillas who vowed to resist "godless communism".

When the Red Army failed and withdrew in February 1989, the Kremlin worried that Kabul International Airport might fall to the guerrillas and make the Soviets' departure extremely difficult.

So the Soviets suddenly chopped down all trees on both sides of the broad, straight avenue in front of the embassy, so the long street could be used as a landing strip for emergency evacuation flights.

Kabul's airport, however, remained secure throughout the Soviet withdrawal.