American military commanders in Afghanistan who have been hunting renegade Taliban leaders yesterday apologised for an air strike which killed nine children.
The target of the attack, which happened at Hutala, in eastern Afghanistan, was Mullah Wazir, thought to have been behind the recent killing of two foreign road workers.
But when American soldiers searched the wreckage of the bombed house they found the bodies of the children and two adults. It is thought the children had been playing outside in a walled yard when the A-10 plane struck.
”They were just playing ball, and then the shots came down,” said Hamidullah, a distraught villager who said his eight-year-old son, Habibullah, was among the dead.
The US ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, said he was ”deeply saddened” by the ”tragic loss of innocent life.”
At the ruins, local reporters described seeing the bloodied clothes and shoes of children scattered across a mud compound which was pitted with small craters.
”Coalition forces regret the loss of any innocent life,” said Colonel Bryan Hilferty, a spokesperson for the US-dominated international force in Afghanistan. He said the coalition’s commanders ordered the strike only ”after developing extensive intelligence over an extended period of time”.
A US military spokesperson said the Taliban commander was also killed in the attack on Saturday. But this was challenged by local government officials, who claimed the US plane hit the wrong target.
”The Americans wanted to bomb Mullah Wazir, but they bombed a different house,” said Jawaid Khan, an official in the Ghazni provincial authority. ”The people are very afraid. They have no idea why the Americans bombed their village.”
The United Nations said it was ”profoundly distressed” by the children’s deaths, which it said could have a negative impact among Afghans in the troubled south. It called for a swift investigation and for the information to be made public.
”This incident, which follows similar incidents, adds to a sense of insecurity and fear in the country,” Lakhdar Brahimi, a UN special representative, said in a statement.
Tension in the region has been rising for weeks. A bomb ripped through a bazaar in Kandahar on Saturday, injuring 20 people. Taliban fighters, who claimed responsibility, said the bomb, which had been attached to a bike, was aimed at US soldiers.
On Friday and Saturday, five other road workers were abducted along the new US-funded Kabul to Kandahar highway, which is the only large-scale reconstruction project to have been started outside Kabul since the fall of the Taliban two years ago.
The new road has increasingly drawn attacks against international and government workers this year. Mostly the Taliban’s resurgent forces have claimed responsibility.
In August, another four construction workers were killed. Last month, a UN-sponsored mine clearance programme was suspended after staff were carjacked, allegedly by Taliban fighters. Of the 15 aid workers killed by the Taliban in recent months, most were attacked along or near the road. The attacks are in effect putting the main route into southern Afghanistan off-limits to aid agencies.
US troops have launched counter-insurgency operations across the south, killing dozens of civilians. Last month, six villagers were killed in an air strike in Paktika province. In October, eight family members, including several children, were killed in remote eastern Nuristan. In the worst incident, in July last year, 48 people were killed and 117 wounded when aUS plane bombed a wedding reception in Uruzgan province.
Factional fighting across Afghanistan this year, often involving America’s local allies in the war on terror, has led to the deaths of civilians: last month, about 40 residents were killed in the district of Gereshk, in Helmand province, about 480km south-west of Kabul, during a fight between an American-hired local militia and an American-funded police force.
According to residents, that conflict was sparked when one of the militia leaders denounced his local rival as a Taliban member. ”We don’t know how many civilians are being killed around the country, because nobody’s counting. Most places are too dangerous for foreigners to reach,” said a senior UN official in Kabul yesterday. ”But the little we know is very worrying.”
Many diplomats, aid workers and other analysts in Kabul, including many Americans, condemn US policy in Afghanistan. As in Iraq, the US is perceived to have put too little thought into winning the support of the populace by, for example, rebuilding their shattered country, and to have put too much muscle into waging an unwinnable war against the Taliban’s remnants.
”The fact that the coalition has at least acknowledged that it killed civilians is quite a positive development,” said Vikram Parekh, of the International Crisis Group. ”But the key issue is that this has happened when public sentiment is already against the coalition, and no forthright acknowledgement of guilt is going to change that.” – Guardian Unlimited Â