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Carpetbomb { November 19 2001 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia_china/story.jsp?story=105629http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia_china/story.jsp?story=105629
Carpet bombing 'kills 150 civilians' in frontline town
By Justin Huggler in Cheshma-ye Bangi
19 November 2001
A catastrophic error by carpet-bombing US Air Force
warplanes was blamed yesterday for the deaths of about 150
unarmed Afghan civilians in a densely populated frontline town
caught up in the battle for the Taliban redoubt of Kunduz.
Terrified refugees fleeing the town of Khanabad yesterday told
The Independent that American planes had bombed the area a
few miles from Kunduz daily since Thursday, seemingly
oblivious to the fact that the buildings they were bombing were
civilian homes. All day yesterday, huge plumes of smoke rose
from the hills on the front lines near the Taliban's last northern
stronghold as B-52 bombers continued to drop their loads of
bombs.
"I saw 20 dead children on the streets," said Zumeray, one of
the refugees. "Forty people were killed yesterday alone. I saw
it with my own eyes. Some of them were burned by the bombs,
others were crushed by the walls and roofs of their houses
when they collapsed from the blast."
The relentless US pounding appears to have persuaded the
Taliban forces to surrender, provided the Northern Alliance
fighters pledge not to kill the mostly Arab and Pakistani
fighters among them. The Taliban offer was conditional on UN
representatives monitoring the surrender, they said.
The still-unverified reports of the killing of civilians by US
bombers may further complicate attempts to flush out Taliban
and al-Qa'ida fighters. The Taliban have also remained in
control in their southern stronghold, Kandahar, while US jets
continued to pound them from the skies. The bombing raids
over the past two days were described as among the heaviest
in 43 days of war.
Khanabad lies 10 miles from Kunduz, one of only two major
population centres in Afghanistan still under Taliban control.
The refugees said they had endured three days of bombing
before the Taliban ordered them out of their homes and told
them they were free to cross the front line.
About 40,000 people live in Khanabad. The refugees said all
but a few, who stayed behind to guard the houses, fled
yesterday. "There was no one in Khanabad to see what
happened," said Farhod, 20, who was travelling with his
parents and his younger brothers and sisters. "There are a lot
of dead people there."
Zumeray had walked across the front line with his mother, his
sister and her children, after abandoning three months' worth of
food in Khanabad. The children had no shoes; they had been
walking for seven hours and their feet were raw.
He spoke of seeing pieces of burned black bodies strewn
around where the bombs had landed. "When the bombs hit,
there was fire everywhere," he said. The first bombs came on
Thursday, he said, and the first house hit belonged to a man
called Agha Padar.
"It was God who brought this on Khanabad," said Farhod. "The
people there have had to suffer so much. We had so many
problems when the Taliban came, and now this.
"This is the work of the Taliban," said Zumeray, insisting that
he was not angry with the Americans. "The Taliban were so
cruel, and God brought the Americans to help us."
The refugees' faces were full of fear. They walked all day, a
steady stream of families fleeing their homes. Some had
newborn babies in their arms. They all told the same story. As
they spoke, B-52s circled lazily overhead and the huge
explosions of the bombs echoed in the mountains. The children
grew nervous at the sound.
While most support the attacks on the Taliban, one man
shouted angrily that the Americans were wrong to kill civilians.
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