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Kills 4 un { October 10 2001 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33653-2001Oct9.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33653-2001Oct9.html
Bomb Kills Four Afghan Civilians
Aid Officials Urge Greater Care After Accidental Hit at Land-Mine Office
By Edward Cody and Molly Moore
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, October 10, 2001; Page A14
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Oct. 9 -- U.S. warplanes mistakenly bombed offices of a land-mine removal group near Kabul early today, killing four guards -- the first independently confirmed civilian deaths in the three-day-old anti-terrorism campaign against Afghanistan.
U.N. and other humanitarian aid officials in Islamabad, reporting the deaths, called on the United States to exercise greater care in what President Bush has promised will be a relentless drive to dismantle Taliban rule in Afghanistan and root accused terrorist leader Osama bin Laden from his hideout there.
"People must distinguish between combatants and innocent people who are not," said Stephanie Bunker, spokeswoman for the Office of the U.N. Coordinator for Humanitarian Affairs in Afghanistan.
U.S. warplanes pounded targets in Afghanistan for a third day, meanwhile, striking in daylight for the first time at military sites near the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar. More raids were reported around Kandahar, Kabul and Herat tonight. U.S. officials said the objectives, as they have been since airstrikes began Sunday night, were mainly command and control centers, airports, communications and air defenses.
There were no reliable reports on damage. Taliban spokesmen said two dozen people have been killed in the bombing. The Taliban envoy in Islamabad, Abdul Salam Zaeef, said bin Laden and the Taliban leader, Mohammad Omar, were unharmed.
Although the number of civilian deaths was relatively small, the predawn bombing of the de-mining office was seen as the first significant blunder in the U.S. campaign, raising warnings among aid workers in Islamabad who monitor what is left of their agencies' activities in Afghanistan.
First, they said, it undermined the Bush administration's pledge that U.S.-led attacks would target Taliban government and military infrastructure, along with bin Laden's training camps and headquarters, to spare the Afghan people further suffering. Second, some aid officials expressed fear that news of the civilian deaths could generate panicky flight from Afghan cities and push a wave of refugees up against the Pakistani border.
The U.S. tactic of dropping food from transport planes to Afghans on the ground also drew criticism here. Aid officials complained they had no idea where the drops were going -- whether food was reaching the neediest areas and whether it was falling into mined areas that could put Afghans at risk as they sought out the rations.
After a decade of warfare between Afghan guerrillas and Soviet troops, followed by another decade of fratricidal combat among rival Afghan militias, the country remains strewn with land mines, estimated to number between 5 million and 7 million and to cover more than 230 square miles.
The head of the U.N. refugee office in Tehran, Bo Schack, said: "My conviction is that food drops and any kind of assistance that is not appropriately distributed and monitored may very well not reach those who it should reach, who are the neediest groups, the most vulnerable, who have the least possibility of getting these items. Nobody knows if it serves our purpose."
Normal channels of humanitarian aid have been disrupted by the bombing raids in Afghanistan and the unrest in Pakistan. Foreign aid workers were ordered out of Afghanistan days after the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States, and many Afghan employees have left their jobs to move their families to more secure locations in their home villages, aid officials said.
Karim Fazal, who heads the Organization for Mine Clearance and Afghan Rehabilitation, said he had voiced concerns over the food drops in a meeting with David Katz, a U.S. consular official in the Pakistani city of Peshawar.
"The countryside is full of mines," he told reporters. "A lot of them are not even surveyed, or if they are surveyed, they are not cleared."
Particularly dangerous, he said, is the northeastern corner of Afghanistan, where many minefields are unmapped.
The offices that were mistakenly bombed belonged to Afghan Technical Consultants, one of a number of groups working under U.N. aegis to survey the country for mines and remove them. The two-story building, about two miles east of Kabul, sat on flat ground about 50 yards from a radio transmission tower and bordered a junkyard for old military radio equipment, Fazal said.
The four victims -- a fifth was treated at a hospital and released -- were inside, perhaps sleeping, when the bomb fell just before 5 a.m., he said.
"Only one leg was left of the poor people inside. Everything else disappeared," Fazal added, quoting de-mining workers who viewed the wreckage. "For two weeks we have been hearing that there will be selective targets and that people will not be hurt. Now we are uncertain."
Nearly 4,000 Afghans are employed by international organizations involved in de-mining Afghanistan.
The airstrikes continued to spark protests in Pakistan, where many people oppose the decision of the president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, to assist Washington and its allies. In the most deadly reaction yet, four people, including a 10-year-old boy, were killed during a gun battle between protesters and the police in the town of Kuchlak.
Residents of Kuchlak, on the road between the southwestern city of Quetta and the Afghan border, said the violence began when several thousand people began assaulting shopkeepers who refused to close their stores and join an anti-American protest. One resident, Abdul Majeed Kakar, said the protesters began hitting shopkeepers with sticks, then ransacked a bank, looted a government office, set fires and fired "many shots" at a police station.
Police returned fire, and by the time the ensuing battle ended, the 10-year-old, who was watching the protesters, was dead after being shot in the chest. Three others, both protesters who were shot in the head, died later, and 14 people were reported hospitalized with injuries.
"We had to crush it," said a government official, adding that the police fired in self-defense.
Also today, news services reported that Taliban soldiers engaged in three-hour gun battle with Pakistani border guards in the Bajaur tribal district as the Afghans tried to enter Pakistan to seek shelter from U.S. airstrikes.
By contrast, Quetta was quiet one day after protesters burned banks, movie theaters and a police station.
Since Sunday, Musharraf has ordered several leaders of radical Islamic groups based in the Peshawar area placed under house arrest, which may partly explain the reduced scale of today's rallies. But other Islamic leaders vowed to continue their protests as long as the U.S. attacks continue, and one called for Musharraf to step down.
Qazi Hussain Ahmed, the leader of Jamaat-e-Islami, the largest religious party in Pakistan, told reporters in Peshawar that Musharraf had lost his credibility. He said Jamaat would continue to hold peaceful demonstrations against the United States and Musharraf.
"Musharraf cannot continue as the head of Pakistan because the people will not accept him," Hussain Ahmed said tonight. "He cannot remain in power by force." He said there was "no moral or legal justification" for the U.S. attacks on Afghanistan, and that "anti-American sentiment will grow" in Pakistan and other Muslim countries if they continue.
Concerns were eased today over how the airstrikes may have affected the fate of eight foreign aid workers being held by the Taliban on charges of spreading Christianity. Their Pakistani lawyer, Atif Ali Khan, said: "I did speak to Kabul and I was assured that they are safe, that they are physically all right, although they are scared by what has happened."
Another Westerner, however, was taken captive by the Taliban. Michel Peyrard, 44, a reporter for the French weekly Paris Match, was arrested in eastern Afghanistan. Peyrard, who was dressed in a woman's full-length veil when he was apprehended, will be charged with spying, according to news reports.
Correspondents David Finkel in Quetta, Pakistan, Pamela Constable in Peshawar, Pakistan, and John Ward Anderson in Tehran contributed to this report.
© 2001 The Washington Post Company
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