- KABUL/WASHINGTON (Reuters)
- Afghan villagers said Monday the U.S. military killed more than 100 people
in an air raid as American forces on the ground combed rugged mountain
terrain for fugitive Osama bin Laden.
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- Villager Janat Gul told Reuters Sunday's attack on the
eastern village of Qalaye Niazi was believed to have involved one jet,
one B-52 bomber and two helicopters.
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- Residents said up to 107 people had been killed, many
of them women and children, but it was difficult to identify victims because
of the damage.
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- Asked about the report, Major Pete Mitchell, a spokesman
for U.S. Central Command, said: "We are aware of the incident and
we are currently investigating."
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- Word of the killings came just three days after new Afghan
Defense Minister Mohammad Fahim appealed for an end to U.S. bombing raids,
which had already been blamed for hundreds, possibly thousands, of civilian
deaths.
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- General Fahim said there was no point in continuing the
attacks as bin Laden, presumed mastermind behind the September 11 suicide
hijack attacks on U.S. cities, had probably fled to neighboring Pakistan
and his al Qaeda network of militant Islamic fighters had dispersed.
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- The September attacks on New York and Washington killed
more than 3,000 Americans and other nationals.
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- In Qalaye Niazi, an official of the local tribal Shura,
or council, said U.S. troops had been invited to view the raid damage.
A Reuters cameraman saw American troops accompanied by Northern Alliance
forces en route to the village, about 2.5 miles north of the city of Gardez,
capital of Paktia province.
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- The province borders Pakistan and is southwest of the
jagged canyons of Tora Bora, where many al Qaeda fighters made a last stand.
It was heavily bombed in early December when bin Laden was believed to
be hiding there.
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- Amid the destruction in Qalaye Niazi, Reuters cameraman
saw scraps of flesh, pools of blood and clumps of what appeared to be human
hair. Huge craters had been blasted out by the strike.
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- "There are no al Qaeda or Taliban people here,"
said Gul. He said 24 members of his family had died in the pre-dawn raid.
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- Nearly three months into their military campaign to track
down bin Laden, U.S. forces in Afghanistan will see in the New Year with
little idea of his whereabouts or even if he has survived the air raids
so far.
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- The Saudi-born Islamic radical was last seen looking
tired and gaunt in a videotape that surfaced last week but had apparently
been made earlier in December.
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- "The latest intelligence we've had indicates that
the high probabilities are that bin Laden is still alive," Senator
Bob Graham, chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, told
the U.S. television network CNN.
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- "Where he is, is a question mark. The trail has
gone cold as to whether he's still in the caves of Tora Bora or, in fact,
has slipped into (neighboring) Pakistan," he said.
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- The Pentagon said U.S. paratroopers would deploy in southern
Afghanistan to free Marines operating there for other unspecified duties.
Soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division would move into the region of Kandahar,
former stronghold of bin Laden's ousted Taliban protectors.
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- They "will continue combat operations to defeat
the remaining Taliban and al Qaeda forces, process detainees and secure
the Kandahar airfield to allow entry of humanitarian relief supplies and
personnel," it added.
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- In Kabul, meanwhile, an advance column of about 50 British
troops arrived by truck to take up peacekeeping duties in the capital,
the vanguard of an international security force agreed with Afghanistan's
new rulers.
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- Officials of the interim government and Britain were
poring over the final wording of a formal agreement on the force, authorized
by the U.N. Security Council to fill the security vacuum after the Taliban's
collapse.
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- The force, expected to number 3,000, has been a source
of disquiet for members of the interim administration.
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- Many ordinary Afghans are eager to see a foreign security
force on city streets, remembering the bloody civil war among mujahideen
(holy warrior) groups that destroyed much of Kabul and killed some 50,000
people from 1992 until the victorious Taliban imposed peace in the city
in 1996.
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- However, officials such as Defense Minister Fahim, a
former mujahideen member and security leader of the Northern Alliance that
took Kabul in November, are eager to stamp their own authority on Afghanistan.
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- A Pentagon spokesman said Sunday the number of suspected
Taliban and al Qaeda fighters being held by the U.S. military for questioning
had risen to 150. Of those, 139 were housed in a makeshift jail at Kandahar
airport.
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- Military officers said the prisoners were being finger-printed
and interrogated for information that could lead to bin Laden and his top
lieutenants.
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- The Pentagon said two B1-B bombers fired missiles at
a Taliban leadership complex about 10 miles from the Paktia provincial
capital Gardez in eastern Afghanistan.
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- While Afghanistan took shaky steps toward peace, India
and Pakistan were locked in the biggest military buildup in almost 15 years.
It follows a bloody attack on parliament in New Delhi on December 13 which
India blamed on Pakistani-backed militants.
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