Paliko News Report

[Guest guest]

Dear Friends,

 

Below is a copy of a news report on the wedding bombing.

 

Love,

Maggie

 

 

 

"US bomb blunder kills 30 at Afghan wedding

 

Pentagon admits one of its bombs was 'errant'

 

Luke Harding, South Asia correspondent and Matthew Engel in Washington

Tuesday July 2, 2002

The Guardian

 

American military officials were last night trying to explain one of

their worst blunders during the nine-month war in Afghanistan after a

US plane mistakenly targeted a house full of wedding guests, killing

at least 30 of them.

The bombing happened at 1am yesterday in a village in the rugged and

mountainous central region of Oruzgan, 105 miles north of the

southern city of Kandahar.

 

Survivors of the attack said several guests had just fired their

Kalashnikovs into the air, as is traditional in Pashtun wedding

ceremonies. A US air patrol over-head wrongly concluded it was coming

under fire and responded with devastating force.

 

An AC-130 helicopter gun-ship and B-52 bomber blasted the scene,

leaving scores of people dead - among them women and children - and

at least 40 injured.

 

Pentagon officials last night conceded that at least one bomb dropped

on the village of Kakarak was "errant". But their initial response

was confused and they were unable to explain why the pilots had

failed to establish whom they were attacking in a region clearly

abandoned by Taliban and al-Qaida fighters several months ago.

 

"There was no one to help last night," one resident, Abdul Saboor,

said. "We managed to transfer some of the wounded to Kandahar in the

morning. Some of the foreigners' choppers also came to help."

 

"There are no Taliban or al-Qaida or Arabs here. These people were

all civilians, women and children."

 

An Afghan defence ministry official last night said more than 30

people had been killed in the attack, which appears to have gone on

for two hours. The original death toll had been put as high as 120.

 

"It was a wedding ceremony and some of the participants were firing

in the sky as part of the celebration. Americans have confessed that

they made a mistake," he said.

 

Several survivors recovering in Kandahar's Mir Wais hospital

yesterday said US troops had arrived at the scene shortly afterwards

demanding to know "who fired on the helicopters".

 

Hospital officials said a number of wounded were being brought to

Kandahar, a day's journey away by road. Most of the dead and injured

were women and children, they said. A six-year-old girl named Paliko

was brought to the hospital still wearing her party dress. She was

injured, but villagers said all members of her family were killed.

 

"Their families are gone. The villagers brought these children and

they have no parents. Everyone says that their parents are dead,"

Mohammed Nadir, a nurse, said.

 

The incident is deeply embarrassing for the American military, which

has so far had little success in fulfilling its initial war aim of

hunting down Osama bin Laden. Most senior Taliban figures together

with remnants of al-Qaida decamped to Pakistan's tribal regions late

last year, intelligence sources believe.

 

In Washington, the Pentagon yesterday admitted that at least one bomb

dropped by western warplanes had missed its target, but it could not

confirm claims that members of a wedding party had been killed.

 

Lt Cmdr Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said anti-aircraft fire was

directed at an air patrol of "coalition warplanes" and they had

responded with close air support north of Kandahar. "At least one

bomb was errant. We don't know where it fell," he said. "We are aware

of reports of civilian casualties but don't know if casualties were

caused [by] the bomb."

 

The Taliban's vanished leader Mullah Mohammed Omar grew up in the

remote and overwhelmingly rural province of Oruzgan, which was once a

Taliban stronghold. But with the demise of the fundamentalist regime

last year virtually all locals with Taliban links escaped elsewhere.

Spe cial forces and other coalition troops were in the area at the

time of yesterday's incident, apparently searching for al-Qaida

suspects.

 

American warplanes have made several other grievous errors during

their war in Afghanistan - but are not believed to have killed so

many civilians at a single stroke.

 

According to local Afghans, 11 members of a wedding party were killed

in a similar incident in May in the village of Balkhiel, 30 miles

north of the town of Khost.

 

The guests were bombed after celebrating by firing into the air. US

officials later insisted their planes had come under enemy attack.

 

The village of Hazar Qadam wrongly bombed in January is also in

Oruzgan. Some 16 innocent people were killed and 27 captured. The 27

were later released after US officials admitted their mistake and

allowed them to return home.

 

In April four Canadian soldiers died when a US fighter bombed them by

mistake during a training exercise.

 

And last December planes bombed a convoy from the eastern town of

Khost, killing a group of tribal elders travelling to Kabul for Hamid

Karzai's inauguration as interim leader."