The US government confirmed Monday that it bombed a village near Kandahar and may have killed civilians after its aircraft came under fire. Local Afghan officials said the bomb hit a wedding party, killing about 40 people and injuring 70, most of them women and children.
Reports of the incident conflicted. The Pentagon insisted the aircraft attacked a legitimate hostile target but suggested an errant bomb may have caused civilian casualties.
The US Central Command, which is responsible for US military operations in Afghanistan, said a coalition operation in Uruzgan province "may have resulted in civilian casualties."
"Close air support from US Air Force B-52 and AC-130 aircraft struck several ground targets, including anti-aircraft artillery sites that were engaging the aircraft," the brief statement said, providing no other details.
At Bagram air base, US military spokesman Col. Roger King said an AC-130 gunship, a B-52 bomber and other aircraft joined the attack after coalition ground forces came under fire.
"We understand that there were some civilian casualties in the operation, but we do not yet know how many casualties or how they occurred," King said. "The United States expresses its deepest sympathies to those who have lost their loved ones."
He said at least four of the injured were treated by US forces.
Bismullah, communications chief of Uruzgan province, said Afghans in the village of Kakarak, about 175 miles southwest of Kabul, were firing weapons in the air during the wedding, a common practice in rural Afghanistan, when US planes attacked, killing about 40 people and injuring 70.
Noor Mohammed, leader of neighboring Gujran district, reported the same casualty figures and said Afghans were "upset because innocent people have died."
Earlier, a source from the Afghan Ministry of Defense said that a US bomb had killed at least 250 people at the wedding party; those numbers could not be confirmed, however.
US military officials said that it appeared the errant bomb was a JDAM - a 2,000-pound GPS-guided weapon known as the Joint Direct Attack Munition - dropped by a B-52 bomber.
The B-52 was part of a military operation in Uruzgan in which US aircraft were bombing caves and bunkers suspected of housing Taliban or al-Qaida militants, according to the officials. This area is considered Taliban country and a suspected hiding spot for Taliban leader Mullah Omar.
VICTIMS AND SURVIVORS
In the southern city of Kandahar, where many of the victims were taken, Afghans said the attack began about 2 a.m. Monday and lasted for about two hours. A nurse at the Kandahar hospital, Sher Mohammed, said he heard that about 120 people were killed.
Hospital officials said most of the dead and injured were women and children. One of the injured, a 6-year-old girl named Paliko, was brought to the hospital still wearing her party dress. Villagers said all members of her family were killed.
Another injured child, 7-year-old Malika, lost her mother, father, a brother and a sister, according to neighbors who brought her to the hospital.
"We have many children who are injured and who have no family," nurse Mohammed Nadir said.
In Kandahar, one survivor, Abdul Qayyum, told reporters at the Mir Wais Hospital that after the attack, the Americans came to the area demanding to know "who fired on the helicopters."
"I said 'I don't know' and one of the soldiers wanted to tie my hands but someone said he is an old man and out of the respect they didn't," he said.
IN THE CROSSFIRE
The injured also included Haji Mohammed Anwar, who Afghans said was a friend of President Hamid Karzai and one of the first prominent local figures who rose up against the former Taliban regime.
The bombing occurred in the same province where US special forces killed 21 Afghans when they stormed buildings in Khas Uruzgan village on Jan. 23 looking for al-Qaida and Taliban forces. The Pentagon later acknowledged that none of those killed were al-Qaida or Taliban, but Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld cleared the Americans of any wrongdoing.
Karzai expressed concern that innocent Afghan civilians are being caught in the cross fire in the war on terrorism.
"I will definitely want the Afghan civilians, the Afghan villages to be immune from accidental damage," Karzai said. "To be sure that they do not receive accidental firing at them. To make sure that our women and children and villages don't suffer."
In areas of eastern and southern Afghanistan, where US special forces and their coalition allies have focused their war against fugitive al-Qaida and Taliban elements, some villagers say they are being wrongly targeted for arrest or harassment as al-Qaida and Taliban suspects.
GRENADES HIT US CAMP
In a separate development, two rocket-propelled grenades were fired late Sunday at an airfield in eastern Afghanistan used by US special forces troops, a military spokesman, but no injuries were reported.
King, the US military spokesman, said it was not known who fired the grenades, which exploded on the grounds of the airfield near the eastern city of Khost. He declined to say how close the explosions were to US forces, though he said no equipment was damaged.
US forces did not return fire because they could not determine which direction the grenades came from, King said.
"It was enough of a concern that we wanted to go out and find out who was shooting at us," King told reporters at Bagram air base near Kabul, the capital, which is the headquarters of US military operations in Afghanistan. "But it's not like somebody penetrated our perimeter."
He said the rockets have a range of about 300 yards.
About 50 US special forces troops are based at the field in Khost, 93 miles south of Kabul, King said.
FREQUENTLY A TARGET
US troops and their allies have repeatedly come under rocket fire in Afghanistan in recent weeks but have suffered no casualties.
Sur Gul, the security chief in Khost, said three rockets were fired in the direction of the airport on Saturday but landed about a mile short.
US and British troops have been searching the area around Khost and other provinces near the Pakistani border for al-Qaida and Taliban fighters. Few fighters have been found.
US troops in Khost also came under rocket fire on June 24 and June 25 but suffered no casualties.
King said US special forces patrols during the weekend found two large weapons caches in caves in southeastern Afghanistan, the latest in a series of weapons stockpiles uncovered by US and British troops in recent weeks.
He said there were signs of recent activity in the caves, found on Saturday and Sunday with the help of Afghan allies near villages in the hills that separate Paktika and Paktia provinces.
"There were some things that were found that would lead me to believe that this facility was used within the relatively recent past," King said, without elaborating.
(China Daily July 2, 2002)
