Nine children among 10 killed in US Afghan raid

By DAVID BRUNNSTROM

KABUL - US-led forces in Afghanistan mistakenly killed nine children during an air strike on a leader of the banned Taleban regime, the US military said on Sunday.

Saturday's strike near the town of Ghazni also killed the Taleban leader, who has been blamed for the killing of two workers on a key highway project in the troubled south of the country.

Hours after the strike, suspected Taleban guerrillas kidnapped two Indians working on the same road.

A statement from spokesman Colonel Bryan Hilferty at the US headquarters in Afghanistan said the children's bodies had been found by ground troops of the US-led force near the body of the intended target.

It said it regretted the loss of innocent life and the "tragic incident" was being investigated. It said the US-led force had acted "after developing extensive intelligence over an extended period of time."

The statement did not identify the target, but Ghazni's deputy governor, Kheyal Mohammad Hussaini, said he was Mullah Wazir, a local Taleban leader. He said US planes had conducted the attack and local authorities had not been informed beforehand.

The United Nations said it was "profoundly distressed" by deaths of the children and called for a swift investigation.

"This incident, which follows similar incidents, adds to a sense of insecurity and fear in the country," the UN Special Representative to Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, said in a statement.

The children were just the latest civilians killed by US-led forces pursuing remnants of the Taleban regime, which was overthrown in late 2001, and allied Islamic militants.

In November six civilians were killed in an air strike in the southern province of Paktika, and nearly three weeks before that eight members of the same family, including children, died in a similar attack in the province of Nuristan.

In a notorious incident in July last year the Afghan government said 48 people had been killed and 117 wounded in Uruzgan province when a US AC-130 gunship aircraft attacked a wedding party. The US military said 34 had died and 50 had been wounded -- mostly women and children -- but said the aircraft had come under ground fire.

KIDNAPPINGS

In its latest statement, the US military did not identify the road contractors killed, but there have been a number of fatalities on the same Kabul-Kandahar road project blamed on Taleban attacks.

Hours after Saturday's air strike two Indians working on the U.S.-funded project were kidnapped by suspected Taleban guerrillas in the same Shah Joy district of Zabul province where a Turkish engineer was abducted in late October.

The Indians were abducted on Saturday afternoon while out shopping, said Zabul police chief Haji Mohammad Ayoub.

The Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press news agency said it had received a call from a man claiming to be a Taleban member who said the Indians had been kidnapped by the guerrillas on the border between Ghazni and Zabul provinces.

The abduction came a week after Turkish engineer Hassan Onal was released by Taleban kidnappers following a month's captivity after his abduction on the same Kabul-Kandahar road.

Also on Saturday a bomb blast in the main market of the southern city of Kandahar wounded at least 18 people. President Hamid Karzai called it a "terrorist" attempt to disrupt a Grand Assembly due to meet in Kabul this month to approve a new constitution.


An official at the Indian embassy said the two Indians, both aged 24, were working with BSC-C&C JV, an Indian firm contracted to Louis Berger Group Inc, the US company leading the project.

Mullah Roazi, whom the government described as the leader of the Taleban kidnapping gang, told Reuters Taleban leaders had decided to free Onal after the government had released two Taleban prisoners held in Ghazni, but Kabul denied any deal was done.

Roazi also said the main reason Onal was freed was that he was Muslim.

The kidnapping of the Indians is another blow to the road project, the single largest reconstruction scheme in Afghanistan, which has been hit by a wave of deadly guerrilla attacks on workers and de-miners.

- REUTERS