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Warplane kills 11 aghan civilians { July 1 2002 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
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US warplane kills 11 Afghan civilians in bombing blunder
A US warplane has accidentally bombed a house in Afghanistan, killing 11 civilians.
The US Air Force says the plane had been pursuing enemy attackers when it mistakenly bombed the house near Afghanistan's eastern border with Pakistan.
The home was on the outskirts of Shkin, 35 miles south of the capital. Military officials have called the deaths a tragic incident.
The killings occurred after unidentified assailants attacked a checkpoint manned by Allied soldiers near the town, the military said from its headquarters at Bagram Air Base, north of the capital, Kabul.
The last major civilian casualties caused by US-led forces in Afghanistan occurred on July 1, 2002 - when 48 civilians were killed and 117 wounded by a US Air Force AC-130 gunship that attacked several villages in Afghanistan's Uruzgan province, according to Afghan officials.
Afghan officials and survivors said at the time that most of the dead were women and children celebrating a wedding at a compound in the Deh Rawod area. They said the only gunfire from the area came from celebrants shooting their rifles into the air. No anti-aircraft weapon was ever found.
In the latest incident, two Harrier attack aircraft were called in and spotted two groups of five to 10 enemy fighters each. One of the planes dropped a 1,000-pound laser-guided bomb. In a statement, the military said: "The bomb missed the intended target and landed on the house. The circumstances of the bombing are being investigated. Coalition forces never intentionally target civilian locations."
It added four Afghan fighters were injured in the initial fighting and evacuated to a nearby US base, where they are in a stable condition. No US soldiers were injured. It's not clear what happened to the enemy fighters.
Over 10,000 coalition troops have been hunting down rebel fighters from the former Taliban regime, al-Qaida, and their allies, including former Prime Minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. There have been several rocket attacks and ambushes in recent weeks near Shkin, a key border crossing point from Pakistan.
Afghan authorities say Taliban remnants are reorganizing in an effort to destabilize the fledgling government of US-backed President Hamid Karzai. Southern Afghanistan in particular has been hit by several attacks in the last few weeks by suspected Taliban fighters, including the murder of an International Red Cross worker and an ambush on a US military convoy that killed two US servicemen.
© Associated Press
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