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Nine afghan kids dead after air strike Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://abcnews.go.com/wire/World/ap20031207_361.htmlhttp://abcnews.go.com/wire/World/ap20031207_361.html
9 Afghan Kids Dead After U.S. Air Strike
U.S. Mistakenly Kills 9 Afghan Children in Airstrike Targeting Wanted Taliban Commander
The Associated Press
HUTALA, Afghanistan Dec. 7 — Children's hats and shoes littered a bloody field cratered by gunfire Sunday after a U.S. airstrike, aimed at a wanted Taliban commander, mistakenly killed nine children in an Afghan mountain village.
The American warplane was targeting Mullah Wazir, once a local commander for the hard-line Islamic militia. U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and a U.S. military official said Wazir was killed in the attack, but residents and local officials said he escaped.
The strike was the latest U.S. air attack to kill Afghan civilians as American-led forces hunt for remnants of the Taliban and al-Qaida who have stepped up violence in southern and eastern Afghanistan.
Khalilzad said he was "deeply saddened" by the "tragic loss of innocent life," and had spoken to Afghan President Hamid Karzai about the attack. A senior U.S. military officer and Afghan officials were meeting Sunday with the bereaved families in the eastern Afghan village of Hutala, he said.
The United Nation's envoy to Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, said he was "profoundly distressed." The airstrike, "which follows similar incidents, adds to a sense of insecurity and fear in the country," Brahimi said.
Also Sunday, two Turkish engineers and an Afghan were kidnapped outside Kabul, officials said, bringing to five the number of workers who have been abducted in Afghanistan in the last three days. Taliban fighters are increasingly targeting foreign workers and aid groups helping in the country's reconstruction.
In Hutala, a field was pockmarked by dozens of small craters from the American A-160 aircraft's guns. There were pools of blood and articles of children's clothing were strewn on the ground.
"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 those killed. Like many Afghans, they only have one name.
U.S. Army Maj. Christopher E. West said the target identified by the U.S. ambassador as Wazir was killed in the attack, south of the city of Ghazni, 100 miles southwest of the capital, Kabul.
"At the time we initiated the attack, we did not know there were children nearby," West said from the U.S. military headquarters at Bagram, north of Kabul.
West and Khalilzad said U.S. troops had gone to the scene and identified Wazir among the dead. They also discovered the bodies of the nine children.
Khalilzad stopped short of acknowledging that the military was responsible, saying an investigation was under way.
"The Americans wanted to bomb Mullah Wazir, but they bombed a different house," said Jawaid Khan, the Ghazni governor's secretary. "The people there are very afraid. They have no idea why the Americans bombed their village." He put the number of children killed at eight and said two other men were also killed.
About a dozen U.S. soldiers stood guard outside a mud house in Hutala that locals said belonged to Wazir.
West called Wazir a "known terrorist." But Wazir was not known as a major player during the regime of the hardline Islamic Taliban militia, which was ousted two years ago by U.S.-led forces.
Khalilzad said Wazir "had bragged of his personal involvement in attacks on innocent Afghan citizens." Local Afghan official Ahmad Zia Masood said that Wazir himself fired at U.S. helicopters on Friday.
West said U.S. troops had collected "extensive intelligence over an extended period of time" and located Wazir at an "isolated, rural site."
The 11,500 U.S.-led troops hunting Taliban and al-Qaida remnants in south and east Afghanistan often are supported by air power, and there have been a string of incidents where warplanes have mistakenly killed civilians.
By an AP count from hospitals and other reliable sources conducted in February 2002, at least 500 to 600 Afghan civilians were killed by airstrikes during the U.S.-led campaign that removed the Taliban. Since then, as American forces try to stamp out Taliban fighters, more deaths have occurred.
The worst incident was in July 2002, when Afghan officials said 48 civilians at a wedding party were killed and 117 wounded by a U.S. Air Force AC-130 gunship in Uruzgan province, which borders Ghazni province.
On April 9, a U.S. warplane mistakenly bombed a home, killing 11 civilians. Another air strike in Nuristan province in eastern Afghanistan on Oct. 31 reportedly killed at least eight civilians in a house.
Taliban attacks including the Nov. 16 drive-by shooting death of a French U.S. aid worker have prompted international aid agencies to reduce operations in Afghanistan's south and east.
In the latest report of a kidnapping targeting foreign experts involved in Afghanistan's reconstruction, unidentified men burst into the office of a Turkish construction company just outside the capital, Kabul, and abducted two Turkish workers and an Afghan one, said Nick Downie of the Afghanistan NGO Security Office, which protects aid workers in the country.
The Turks were working on a project digging new wells in the Khak-i-Jabar area, 15 miles outside Kabul. Their company has not heard from the hostages or their captors, Downie said.
On Saturday, suspected Taliban kidnapped two Indian engineers working on the Kabul-Kandahar road, a reconstruction project mainly funded by the United States. The road was to be officially opened later this month. A Taliban spokesman claimed it was holding them. Taliban recently freed a Turkish engineer from the project after a month in captivity.
Taliban attacks have plagued the flagship project. Four construction workers were killed in August, and de-mining operations along the road were suspended last month after a carjacking. The Turkish engineer was abducted along the road Oct. 30, and released after one month.
Associated Press writers Stephen Graham in Kabul.
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