Seven children killed by US bomb

28 Oct, 2001 11:05 PM3 mins to read

By Andrew Buncombe in Washington, Richard Lloyd-Parry in Islamabad and Phil Reeves in Jerusalem

Despite bombing errors – including the killing of seven children as they ate breakfast in their home in Kabul – the US government insists that its campaign in Afghanistan is going according to plan.

It was a bloody Sunday also in Pakistan, where 16 Christians and a policeman were murdered in an attack on a church service, and in Israel, where Palestinian gunmen killed five people in drive-by shootings.

With anxiety growing about the direction – and accuracy – of the US campaign against terrorism, the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, said: "It is going very much as expected, it is going very much as predicted ... It's not a quagmire at all."

After refusing to comment on the reports of at least 12 civilian casualties in intensive raids around Kabul yesterday, Mr Rumsfeld said the United States was receiving "better intelligence" and closing in on specific terrorist targets.

There have been four separate reports of accidental US strikes on civilian targets in Afghanistan in the last 48 hours, including the bombing of a village within the area controlled by the anti-Taleban Northern Alliance.

In the most serious single incident, confirmed by western news agency correspondents, a stray bomb struck mud houses on the outskirts of Kabul yesterday morning killing 12 people, including a man and his seven children.

"What shall I do now? Look at their savageness," Reuters news agency quoted the mother of the seven dead children as saying. "They killed all of my children and husband," she said.

"The whole world is responsible for this tragedy. Why are they not taking any decision to stop this?"

Sixteen Christian worshippers were killed when five masked men sprayed the Saint Dominic's Catholic Church in the small town of Behawalpur in central Pakistan with automatic fire as the morning service was ending yesterday.

A police guard was also murdered in the worst act of violence in Pakistan since the US and British assault on Afghanistan began three weeks ago. Although no-one claimed responsibility for the attack, it fulfilled the worst fears of the small Pakistani Christian community that they would become a target for retaliation by Islamist extremists.

Thousands of Palestinian, pro-Taleban volunteers were last night said to be massing on the Afghan border, ready to reinforce Afghanistan against possible US ground attacks.

In Israel, five people died in two separate drive-by shootings in the north of the country. Two of the attackers were also killed.

Despite the attacks, there were reports last night that Israel was preparing to bow to US pressure and withdraw its forces from the Plaestinian administered town of Bethlehem.

- INDEPENDENT

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