Arab TV channel office hit in Kabul air raid

An office of the Arab channel Al-Jazeera, which has been criticised by the United States for its coverage of the Afghan conflict, was hit early during an air raid.

The United States said it targeted the al-Qaida network and didn’t know the television channel was located there.

No one was in the two-storey building housing the office when it was hit before dawn yesterday, as columns of Taliban soldiers poured south out of the capital, said Ghulal Mohammed, a guard at the office in Kabul’s Wazir Akbar Khan neighbourhood.

‘‘It was a rocket, but everyone is OK,’’ he said. He said the missile did not explode.

But an American official said two 500-pound bombs were dropped on the site, which the US military believed was an office of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network.

The building was ‘‘a known al-Qaida facility in central Kabul,’’ said Colonel Rick Thomas, a spokesman for the US Central Command.

‘‘We had no indications this or any nearby facility was used by al-Jazeera,’’ Thomas said. ‘‘We had identified two locations in Kabul where al-Jazeera people worked, and this location wasn’t among them.’’

Al-Jazeera’s managing director, Mohammed Jassim al-Ali, said the office was hit before dawn and that nobody was there at the time. He said its 10 staffers were believed to be safe but their whereabouts were unknown.

Asked if he thought Al-Jazeera’s office was deliberately targeted, al-Ali said: ‘‘They know where we are located and they know what we have in our office and we also did not get any warning.’’

Al-Ali said the equipment was destroyed but staff were safe.

‘‘We don’t know where our crew members are. We are trying to see how we can communicate with them.’’

The nearby offices of the BBC and the Associated Press in Kabul were damaged by an explosion that rocked the neighborhood at the same time that Al-Jazeera’s office was hit. Windows in both offices were shattered.

There were no injuries among the BBC and AP employees in the offices.

Several houses in the neighbourhood were targeted by US jets. Arabs who apparently belonged to al-Qaida, as well as Pakistani, Chechen and Uzbek warriors who fought alongside the Taliban, occupied houses in the neighbourhood.

A Taliban government ministry was across the street from the office, and Taliban anti-aircraft positions were located on a hill nearby.

After the Taliban fled Kabul overnight, fighters from the anti-Taliban northern alliance marched in from the north.

Afghan workers of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Kabul said a rocket fired from a US jet hit a pickup truck, killing four Arabs. The charred bodies of the four unidentified men were taken by the Red Cross.

Al-Jazeera has aired taped statements said to be made inside Afghanistan by bin Laden and his aides, and its reporter Tasir Alouni became familiar to Arab viewers around the world, providing live reports from Taliban-controlled areas barred to most Western reporters.

He often described US missiles hitting civilian areas and killing women and children. The United States has disputed Taliban claims of widespread civilian casualties.

American officials have criticised Al-Jazeera’s coverage of the bombing campaign as inflammatory propaganda.

But the 24-hour station reaches more than 35 million Arabs, including 150,000 in the United States, and the Bush administration has acknowledged its significance lately.

The station recently interviewed top US officials: Secretary of State Colin Powell, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Al-Jazeera yesterday showed CNN footage from Kabul and live coverage Tuesday from its five-member crew in the Taliban’s home base, the southern city of Kandahar.