Afghans want answers after latest US blunder

Afghanistan’s new government was looking for answers today after dozens of people died when a wedding party was attacked by a US B-52 bomber and a Spectre gunship.

Survivors said most of those killed were women and children.

The US said its forces came under fire, and denied mistaking gunshots let off at the wedding as an attack on their aircraft.

Local officials said about 40 people were killed and 70 more wounded. But a nurse at Kandahar hospital said he thought about 120 people were killed.

One of the injured, a six-year-old girl named Paliko, was brought to the hospital still wearing her party dress. Villagers said all her family had been killed.

Another injured child, seven-year-old Malika, lost her mother, father, a brother and a sister, according to neighbours who brought her to the hospital.

‘‘We have many children who are injured and who have no family,’’ nurse Mohammed Nadir said.

‘‘Their families are gone. The villagers brought these children and they have no parents. Everyone says that their parents are dead.’’

‘‘We are sending a team to investigate, to find out what happened,’’ said Tayyab Jawad, a spokesman for newly elected President Hamid Karzai.

Karzai launched his campaign against the hard-line Taliban from Uruzgan province, where the attack occurred.

New tribal affairs minister Arif Noorzai would head the Afghan investigation team to Kakarak, about 175 miles southwest of the capital Kabul.

US Central Command, which is responsible for US military operations in Afghanistan, said it was also sending a fact-finding team.

Bismullah, communications chief of Uruzgan province, said Afghans in Kakarak were firing weapons in the air during the wedding, which is common in rural Afghanistan. He said about 40 people were killed and 70 others wounded.

Noor Mohammed, leader of neighbouring Gujran district, reported the same casualty figures and said Afghans were ‘‘upset because innocent people have died’’.

Jawad said the Afghan fact-finding mission would also go to nearby Des Rawat, where the one-eyed leader of the Taliban movement, Mullah Mohammed Omar once preached. Des Rawat, like Kakarak, is surrounded by rugged peaks.

‘‘Mullah Omar is not from here, but a long time ago he was in the Des Rawat mosques,’’ Noor Mohammed said. ‘‘It is possible that some Taliban commanders may be hiding in the mountains around, but we have not seen anyone.’’

The Central Command acknowledged that attacks by B-52 and AC-130 aircraft north of Kandahar ‘‘may have resulted in civilian casualties’’.

‘‘We understand that there were some civilian casualties in the operation, but we do not yet know how many casualties or how they occurred,’’ US military spokesman Colonel Roger King said at Bagram air base, the US headquarters north of Kabul. ‘‘The United States expresses its deepest sympathies to those who have lost their loved ones.’’

He said at least four of the injured were treated by US forces. All four of them were under five-years-old, he said.

In the southern city of Kandahar, where many of the victims were taken, Afghans said the attack began about 2 am and lasted for about two hours.

Uruzgan, like most of east and south Afghanistan, is dominated by ethnic Pashtuns, which made up the core of the Taliban movement.

Since the collapse of the Taliban, ethnic Pashtuns have felt increasingly marginalised, targeted by minority ethnic groups, who dominate the government

The United Nations has reported discrimination against ethnic Pashtuns. International aid organisations have been reluctant to begin full operations in Pashtun-dominated areas because of the continuing war on terror.

International human rights agencies have warned of increasing alienation of ethnic Pashtuns, warning it could sow the seeds of future conflicts.

Karzai last week asked the US-led coalition to take care following an earlier incident in which a compound was overrun by US special forces, women were tied up - a strict taboo in conservative Muslim society - and a three-year-old girl drowned in a well where she was hiding.

‘‘I will definitely want the Afghan civilians, the Afghan villages to be immune from accidental damage,’’ Karzai said. ‘‘To be sure that they do not receive accidental firing at them. To make sure that our women and children and villages do not suffer.’’

In Washington, Pentagon spokesman Lieutenant Commander Jeff Davis said an Air Force B-52 bomber that attacked a cave complex in the same general area of Uruzgan province reported that one of its bombs went astray.

Officials said they could not immediately determine where the bomb landed.

He also said an Air Force AC-130 gunship attacked anti-aircraft artillery in the same general area after coalition ground forces came under fire.

Some of the anti-aircraft artillery could have fallen back to the ground and caused casualties, Davis said.

In Kandahar, one survivor, Abdul Qayyum, told reporters at the Mir Wais Hospital that after the attack, the Americans came to the area demanding to know ‘‘who fired on the helicopters’’.

‘‘I said ‘I don’t know’ and one of the soldiers wanted to tie my hands but someone said he is an old man and out of the respect they didn’t,’’ he said.

The injured also included Haji Mohammed Anwar, who Afghans said was a friend of Karzai’s and one of the first prominent local figures who rose up against the former Taliban regime.

The bombing occurred in the same province where US special forces killed 21 Afghans when they stormed buildings in Khas Uruzgan village on January 23 looking for al-Qaida and Taliban forces.

The Pentagon later acknowledged that none of those killed were al-Qaida or Taliban, but US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld cleared the Americans of any wrongdoing.

In areas of eastern and southern Afghanistan, where US special forces and their coalition allies have focused their war against fugitive al-Qaida and Taliban elements, some villagers said they are being wrongly targeted for arrest or harassment as al-Qaida and Taliban suspects.