Published on Tuesday, October 9, 2001 by Agence France Presse
UN Confirms: 4 Anti-Mining Staffers Killed in US Air Strikes
KABUL, Oct 9 (AFP) - Four civilian staff of a demining agency were killed and four injured in US air strikes on the Afghan capital, in the first confirmed civilian deaths of the war against "terrorism," UN officials said Tuesday. U.N. spokeswoman Stephanie Bunker speaks to the media at a news conference in Islamabad, Pakistan Tuesday, Oct. 9, 2001. In the first independent confirmation of civilian casualties in the U.S.-led air assault against Afghanistan, the United Nations on Tuesday said four workers for a U.N.-affiliated mine-clearing agency died in raids the previous night. It appealed for the protection of civilians. (AP Photo/John McConnico) "At 9:00 pm last night (1630 GMT Monday) in Kabul an office of the NGO Afghan Technical Consultants (ATC) was hit in the bombardment of Kabul. The building was destroyed," UN spokeswoman Stephanie Bunker said in neighboring Pakistan.
"ATC was an NGO working under the umbrella of the United Nations Mine Action Program for Afghanistan. Four staff of ATC were killed.
"All four died on the spot. Pieces of their bodies are still to be recovered from the wreckage," she said, adding UN coordinator for Afghanistan, Mike Sackett, sent his condolences to the families of those killed.
Monday night's strikes were the second consecutive raids on targets inside Taliban-controlled Afghanistan by US-led forces aimed at punishing the Islamic militia for failing to hand over Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden.
Bin Laden has been named by the United States as the prime suspect for the September 11 terror attacks in New York and Washington.
Shocked ATC staff, neighbors and Taliban soldiers looked emotional as they picked through the rubble of the office in an eastern part of the city.
The crushed and torn remains of one man could be seen squashed between two concrete slabs.
"This is tyranny. There is no military target here," said an old man. "God curse you America!"
Also See: Landmines in Afghanistan International Campaign to Ban Landmines 9/26/01 ATC employee Mohammad Shafiq said the group had stopped work after the pullout of foreign deminers along with United Nations international staff in the days following the September 11 attacks in the United States.
The ATC group, one of dozens of agencies working to remove the scourge of landmines which litter the country, is in the eastern Yaka Toot area of Kabul, on a main road leading to the eastern city of Jalalabad.
Bunker read out a message from UN coordinator Sackett, saying: "Today the United Nations coordinator for Afghanistan appeals to the international community to protect innocent civilians ...
"People need to distinguish between combatants and innocent civilians who do not bear arms."
She said ATC had cleared a major portion of all battlefield areas of their deadly mines, and highlighted the dangerous, dirty job they had to do.
"ATC does manual mine clearing, the men on the ground with bayonets digging up mines."
And she warned that up to 30 percent of the bombs being dropped currently in Afghanistan could be expected to remain unexploded. "Later these too will have to be removed."
She also added there was "no independent confirmation of other civilian deaths yet."
In the southern city of Kandahar, a Taliban official said one "civilian" died as foreign jets on Monday morning bombed the airport, suburban areas and Maiwand, a town 70 kilometers (40 miles) to the west.
The militia's ambassador to Pakistan later said tens of civilians had been killed in overnight US air strikes and condemned the attacks as acts of "open terrorism."
"Tens of civilians have been killed in attacks on Afghan cities. This is open terrorism, this is not prosecuting so-called terrorists," ambassador Abdul Salem Zaeef told a press conference.
Copyright © 2001 AFP