BAGRAM AIR BASE - A United States fact-finding team says it saw only five graves and 11 injured civilians during a two-day trek through Afghan villages struck by US aircraft this week.
Locals in the area of Deh Rawud in rugged Uruzgan province say more than 170 civilians were killed or injured when US aircraft dropped bombs and sprayed bullets on the area this week.
Spokesman Major Gary Tallman, speaking to reporters at the US air base at Bagram, said yesterday that the investigative team had asked to see the graves of villagers reportedly killed by the US action.
He said the team had been shown only one grave site where villagers said five bodies were buried, in Syansang, 15km from Deh Rawud. The number of villages hit is still in question.
The US has repeatedly defended the attack, saying anti-aircraft fire prompted it and that the villages harboured senior unnamed leaders of the ousted Taleban regime.
Tallman said a reconnaissance operation had seen villagers in the Deh Rawud area set up an 82mm mortar, cover it when they saw US aircraft and then surround it with women and children.
Women and children may have been hit because they were placed in buildings topped with anti-aircraft guns.
Tallman said the area, near the place where Taleban leader Mullah Omar was born, had been under surveillance since October. US aircraft drew anti-aircraft fire each time they flew over.
The governor of the central Afghan province has blamed "informants" for feeding the US bombers wrong information, the Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) reported yesterday.
"We strongly demand the US and Afghan authorities hand over their spies who conveyed wrong information to the US forces," Uruzgan governor Yar Mohammad was quoted as saying.
"This is not the first time. Similar wrong information has led to the bombing of Uruzgan in the past, also causing deaths of many people," he said.
The governor said the raid on Deh Rawud district left 170 people dead and wounded.
Tallman's team has visited Syansang, also struck by US aircraft.
Villagers took team members to a grave site where they said five victims of the attack were buried.
The team took photographs and documented the graves, but Tallman said it was difficult to tell if they were fresh graves. They were not allowed to dig up the graves.
The team visited a clinic outside the village, where seven children and a woman were being treated for injuries to arms and legs, said a reporter on the trip from US forces newspaper Stars and Stripes.
An Afghan local, Abdur Rahman, who was at Syansang when planes fired on the village, gave the team a tour.
He said a wedding was taking place that night and that four villagers were killed and 31 injured.
The team saw shrapnel and bullet holes in the walls of a building in the remote village, the reporter said.
They saw a large crater in a garden, trees with bullet marks and branches that had been blown off.
The team asked villagers if they had been firing into the air, and the locals said they had not, the reporter said.
The US has given conflicting reports in the past few days and anger has mounted in Afghanistan over civilian casualties.
The investigative team was due to return to Kabul today to brief General Dan McNeill, general commander for US forces in Afghanistan, and Hamid Karzai or a representative of the newly elected Afghan President.
The team will hold a press conference shortly afterwards.
- REUTERS
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