Villagers vent fury on US after children's air-raid deaths

Hats and shoes littered a blood-stained field in a desolate Afghan village in the aftermath of an attack by a US warplane targeting a terror suspect that mistakenly killed nine children.

But people in Hutala denied American claims that the suspect was also killed in the attack, saying he was not even in the village at the time.

American officials apologised yesterday and said they were “deeply saddened” by the children’s deaths.

The United Nations has called for an investigation and the Afghan government urged the US-led coalition hunting Taliban and al-Qaida fighters to make sure such an accident was never repeated.

In Hutala, a line of fresh graves marked the tragedy, and village men stood quietly by a stream in a dusty field where the children had been playing. They seemed as bewildered as they were angry.

“First they fire their rockets. Then they say it was a mistake,” Haji Amir Mohammed told The Associated Press, as dozens of American soldiers sent to investigate the incident offered condolences or lay in the warming winter sun. “How can we forgive them?”

Villagers said the young victims had been playing with marbles in a dusty field beside mud homes in the impoverished valley, 150 miles south west of Kabul, when the A-10 ground attack aircraft homed in on Saturday.

Military officials said yesterday they had no idea children were in the area when they decided to attack. US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said the suspect targeted and killed was a former Taliban commander, Mullah Wazir, adding that he was “deeply saddened” by the “tragic loss of innocent life”.

Khalilzad said the former commander “had bragged of his personal involvement in attacks on innocent Afghan citizens”, including aid groups and Afghans working on the Kabul-Kandahar road, a site of frequent violence.

Lt Col Bryan Hilferty, a spokesman for the coalition, told AP in Hutala that it had appeared to the pilot of the aircraft that “just that person that we wanted, that terrorist, was in the field. So we fired on him”.

Troops discovered the children’s bodies after rushing to the scene to verify that they had killed Wazir. US officers flew in yesterday to apologise to village elders, Hilferty said.

But residents were adamant that the military had acted on bogus intelligence. Many said the man killed was not Wazir, and that the former Taliban district commander had left the village some days before the attack.

“There are no terrorists, no Taliban or al-Qaida here,” said Abdul Majid Farooqi. “Just poor people.”

The 11,500 U.S.-led troops hunting Taliban and al-Qaida remnants in south and east Afghanistan are often are supported by air power and there have been a string of military mishaps.

The worst occurred in July 2002, when Afghan officials said 48 civilians at a wedding party were killed and 117 wounded by a US Air Force AC-130 gunship in Uruzgan province, which borders Ghazni province.

On April 9, a US warplane mistakenly bombed a home in the eastern town of Shkin, killing 11 civilians. Another air strike in Nuristan province in eastern Afghanistan on October 31 reportedly killed at least eight civilians in a house.

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

The Afghan government said it fully supported fighting terrorism but urged the US-led coalition to “be very careful not to repeat such tragedies”.