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Us kills 8 in afghan assault { December 10 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52212-2003Dec10.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52212-2003Dec10.html
U.S. Kills 8 in Afghan Assault
Six Children, Two Adults Killed Friday
By Pamela Constable and Fred Barbash
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, December 10, 2003; 7:51 AM
KABUL, Afghanistan, Dec. 10 -- Six children and two adults were crushed to death under a toppled wall Friday during an air and ground assault by U.S. military forces on a farm compound in eastern Paktia Province, U.S. military officials in Afghanistan confirmed Wednesday.
The incident came to light only four days after nine children died during an American air assault Saturday on another village compound in neighboring Ghazni Province. In both cases, the U.S. forces were targeting the homes of suspected Islamic extremists but instead inadvertently killed civilians in the area.
Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty, the U.S. military spokesman at Bagram Air Base, said the bodies of two adults and six children were discovered inside by soldiers Saturday after the Friday night raid, which he said was aimed at destroying a large weapons cache belonging to a renegade Islamic fighter. "We had no indication there were non-combatants in the compound," he said.
The new incident, coming so closely after the deaths of the children in Ghazni, is bound to deepen the concern of Afghan and international authorities here over such high-powered military assaults in populated areas. United Nations officials here sharply criticized the first attack and U.S. military officials apologized for the deaths.
The U.S.-led coalition forces have launched a number of military raids on eastern Afghanistan in recent days, hoping to crush the actions of anti-government fighters from the revived Taliban movement and other groups. These extremists have carried out a series of bombings, shootings and kidnappings in the past several weeks, and have vowed to violently disrupt the national constitutional assembly that begins Saturday.
The incident occurred near the town of Gardez in Paktia province, according to a briefing by Hilferty reported by the Reuters news service.
Hilferty said that troops attacked a compound used to store rockets, mines and artillery. The next morning, when they entered the area, they discovered the bodies of civilians.
"After we went in there, we discovered the next day, when we were trying to clear it, the bodies of two adults and six children under a collapsed wall," he said, according to the Reuters news service. "We don't know what caused the wall to collapse, because although we fired on the compound, there were secondary and tertiary explosions.
"We were conducting a night assault on the compound," he said. "We observed a heavy machinegun firing from a compound that we had no indication there were non-combatants in. We fired on the compound from the air and the machinegun stopped."
Hilferty described the target of the raid, Mullah Jalani, as an "opportunistic terrorist" with ties to guerrillas of the former Taliban regime, al Qaeda and renegade warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. He said Jalani was not found, but nine suspected militants were detained.
The spokesman said U.S. rules of engagement were stringent, shown by the fact they had not fired on 10 people seen leaving the compound, because they could not be identified as combatants.
Hilferty, has attributed the civilian deaths to the "fog and friction of war," but he also has acknowledged that "such mistakes could make the Afghan people think ill" of the U.S.-led military coalition.
In insurgent actions in the past week, suspected Islamic guerrillas have shot dead a Pakistani highway engineer, kidnapped two Indian road workers and threatened to kill them, and wounded 20 people in a bombing in Kandahar. Most attacks have occurred along the southern portion of the highway.
Last month, six civilians died in a U.S. air strike in Paktika province and nearly three weeks before eight family members died in another strike in Nuristan, officials and witnesses said.
On Tuesday, the Pentagon expressed its condolences to the families of civilians killed in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and defended continuing operations designed to capture or kill insurgents in both countries.
"We would be happy to capture them," said Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told a Pentagon briefing. "We would be happy to have them surrender. And if they don't, we would be happy to kill them. And that's what's going on."
"There are risks," acknowledged Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "There are risks anytime you go after any target. But I can tell you, the kind of vetting that the process goes through, from the beginnings of intelligence to the final operation, is exquisite. And we're not going to be perfect, and we found that out in Afghanistan. And we haven't been perfect.
"But I would offer, and would offer again, that both in Afghanistan and Iraq, that the amount of force brought to bear, that the progress that was made, the success we've had, has never been done with more care about bringing innocents into the line of fire. And that will continue."
Barbash reported from Washington.
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
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