- ASMANI KILAI, Afghanistan
(Reuters) - A convoy of vehicles hit by U.S. warplanes was taking tribal
elders to Saturday's inauguration of the new Afghan interim government
in Kabul, villagers at the scene said.
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- They said the attack, which lasted seven hours between
Thursday night and early Friday, killed 50 to 60 people and destroyed 15
vehicles as well about 10 houses and a mosque in the village of Asmani
Kilai in eastern Paktia province.
-
- The dead included several residents of the village, the
villagers told a Reuters Television team in the first independent account
of the bombing.
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- A further 15 people were wounded and had been taken to
a hospital six hours drive away near the border with Pakistan, the
villagers
said. The bodies of those killed were swiftly removed in line with Islamic
custom for burial by relatives, they said.
-
- The United States has said it is investigating the attack
but that its initial findings were that the dead were members of the ousted
Taliban or fighters from Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network of Islamic
militants.
-
- "I will tell you, having been in touch with my
headquarters,
that at this point we believe it was a good target," U.S. General
Tommy Franks told reporters in Kabul after the swearing in of new Afghan
leader Hamid Karzai.
-
- Franks, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan and
the region, said he had also received reports that a U.S. aircraft had
been fired on from the convoy.
-
- Villagers dismissed that account, saying the convoy had
set out for the Afghan capital from the town of Khost carrying tribal
elders
who were not bearing weapons.
-
- DOUBLE-CROSSED?
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- One villager, Khodai Noor, said the convoy had been
diverted
from its intended route by a hostile local commander, whom he named as
Pacha Khan.
-
- Noor said that Khan had then told the Americans that
the vehicles were carrying al Qaeda members.
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- "The people who got hit were going to congratulate
Karzai on the transfer of power and had gone to see the ceremony. These
people were all tribal elders," Noor said. "There are no members
of al Qaeda or supporters of bin Laden here," he said.
-
- The village, in the Ozi district of Paktia province,
sits on barren hills and its houses were reduced to rubble.
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- Six destroyed cars, their bodywork riddled with bullets
and shrapnel, stood on the track. Shrapnel and the remains of spent
ordnance
littered the dirt.
-
- The villagers said more vehicles had been hit further
along the route in air strikes they said occurred between 9.00 p.m. on
Thursday and 4.00 a.m. on Friday.
-
- "Why is this tyranny happening to us?" asked
Haji Khyal Khan, a villager who said he had lost five members of his family
in the air strikes.
-
- Villagers picked through the rubble of their homes
retrieving
what possessions they could, including a battered carpet.
-
- "There were no terrorists. They destroyed a whole
village and we've lost everything," said another villager, Agha
Mohammad.
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- Karzai, speaking at a news conference in Kabul before
the villagers' account emerged, said he would check reports of the attack
but did not believe them to be true.
-
- "I will definitely check that with our American
friends, but I don't think it's true because the first information I got
was there was no such bombing," he said. "If they were al Qaeda
members then they were not tribal chiefs."
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