Merciless US bombing obliterates village: 60 killed
CHOKAR KARAIZ Nov 1: Rubble and fresh graves marked with the flags of martyrs are all that remains of this tiny Afghan village after US bombing killed at least 60 people, survivors said Thursday.
Locals said about 20 villagers survived attacks on October 19 and 20, when wave after wave of US jets pounded the community with heavy bombs and cannon fire, destroying everything in sight.
Foreign reporters brought here by the Taliban militia saw the devastation first-hand: every house had been flattened and huge craters could be seen in the surrounding fields.
"Around midnight the bombing started. It lasted for two hours and then the next night it began again and lasted all night and the rest of the following day," said 36-year-old farmer Mehmood.
"When it started everyone just fled their homes and ran in every direction. We didn't know where to go."
He said he knew 19 people who had died in the attacks, including members of his extended family.
The village, 60 kilometres north of Kandahar, was a scene of utter ruin. Long cracks had opened up in the ground where the bombs struck. Trees were broken and splintered, cars burned and torn. Even cooking pots were riddled with bullets holes.
Huge chunks of shrapnel lay everywhere. One bore the words "Guided Bomb" while another was marked with "For use of MK82". "Many bodies were blown apart and all we could do was collect their limbs and put them together in the same grave," said 65-year-old Mungal as he showed a freshly-dug graveyard.
"I brought some of the remains here in a tractor," he said, pointing to a line of 18 new graves, some of which had been marked with small coloured flags on long, thin poles, signifying martyrdom.
Mungal, who said he lost most of his friends and family in the attack, claimed that the remains of 30 people were buried in the graves.
Although he could not understand why the United States had attacked an innocent farming village, he refused to curse the Americans. "I'm not aware of our crime and why we were bombed. There were no Taliban here," he said.
"If the aircraft did not know who we were they should have checked before they bombed and killed innocent civilians. "I don't know about politics. But I'm angry, and I leave it up to God."
The village was littered with the debris of village life, including children's clothes, women's sandals, and the rotting carcasses of dead sheep.
Villagers said another three or four people were killed when bombs struck a small community of nomads who had pitched their tents nearby.
The US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Tuesday that based on interviews with survivors in hospital in Quetta in neighbouring Pakistan, up to 35 civilians were killed in the attack here, which it said took place on October 22.
"None of the witnesses interviewed by Human Rights Watch knew of Taliban or al-Qaeda positions in the area of the attack," the group said in a statement, which urged the Pentagon to "do more to avoid these deaths."
"If there were military targets in the area, we'd like to know what they were," Sidney Jones, HRW's director for Asia, said.
A makeshift Taliban base, surrounded by anti-aircraft guns, was seen on the road to the village some 15 kilometres outside Kandahar. Two vehicles, their radio antennae removed, were parked in a ditch.
There has been no formal comment from the Pentagon on the attack here, but US officials have dismissed Taliban's claims that more than 1,500 Afghan civilians have died in the bombing.
The Taliban earlier took foreign journalists to see another village which they claimed had been destroyed in a US attack on October 8, a day after the airstrikes began in retaliation for the Islamic militia's alliance with alleged terrorist Osama bin Laden.
Witnesses said that Kadam village, 40 kilometres west of the eastern town of Jalalabad, appeared to have been destroyed but could not confirm residents' claims that up to 160 people had been killed.-AFP