- (AFP) - US troops in Afghanistan have come under fire
during a visit to the victims of an apparent air attack by American planes
which killed 40 wedding guests in a remote village.
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- Details of the attack, in which a US soldier was wounded
in the foot, came as Afghanistan condemned the weekend raid by US aircraft
which Afghan officials say resulted in severe casualties.
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- The soldiers involved in Tuesday's attack by unknown
assailants had been returning to Kandahar air base after visiting a hospital
where injured Afghans were being brought from central Uruzgan province,
Lieutenant Colonel Catherine Abbot said.
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- An investigation is currently underway to discover whether
the US warplanes operating in the Uruzgan area on Sunday launched a deadly
raid on an Afghan village in the Dehrawad district.
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- Meanwhile Afghan President Hamid Karzai has asked US
forces to take "every necessary measure" to avoid further civilian
deaths, according to Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah.
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- Karzai urged the United States "to fully stop the
repetition of such awkward incidents, and ensure that military operations
aimed at finding terrorists do not harm civilians," Abdullah told
reporters here.
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- "It is understandable that there are possible civilian
casualties in military operations," he said. "But, an incident
with such magnitude and such casualties under such conditions is by no
means justifiable."
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- His blunt criticism comes as Afghan and US officials,
at odds over what led to Sunday night's strike, came up with conflicting
accounts of the incident which the United States said was carried out on
Sunday and Monday.
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- On Tuesday, the Pentagon's top leadership discounted
an errant 2,000 pound bomb as the cause of the reported casualties, but
did not rule out the possibility that an AC-130 gunship had reacted to
shots fired at the wedding.
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- "I will tell you that if you happen to be the person
on the other end of whatever the weapon that is pointed at you, and it
is firing, it is very difficult to know whether that's a friendly muzzle
flash or an enemy muzzle flash," said Marine General Peter Pace, vice
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
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- He said the fixed wing aircraft, which carries side-firing
cannons, came under anti-aircraft artillery fire and returned fire at six
individual locations spread out over many kilometers.
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- US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld also expressed regret
for any loss of innocent lives.
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- "These incidents that may occur take some time to
sort out," he said, adding that the US-Afghan team had begun the process
of interviewing people and establishing what happened.
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- "It is unclear how much longer it will take, but
it could take another day or two," he said.
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- Local Afghan officials quoted eyewitnesses as saying
that US aircraft flew over the village twice and started the bombing during
the third run.
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- "The wedding guests remained unconcerned initially
because it has become a routine for them," said an official in the
Afghan town of Kandhar.
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- He quoted a resident as saying, "We were busy singing
and drum beating when attacked."
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- Officials in Uruzgan said more casualties were feared.
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- "More villages were bombed that night (Sunday) and
also during the day on Monday," Raz Mohammad, the brother of Uruzgan
governor Yar Mohammad, told AFP by satellite telephone.
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- The joint US-Afghan fact finding mission flew by helicopter
to Dehrawad early Tuesday, stopping here to pick up ministers assigned
by Karzai to join the probe.
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- The B-52s and C-130s had been prowling around Uruzgan
capital Tirin Kot, 30 kilometers (20 miles) east of Dehrawad, where US
special forces have based operations to hunt down the Taliban's fugitive
leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, Raz Mohammad said.
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- US and local Afghan forces from the main southern city
of Kandahar had been jointly tracking down the elusive Taliban chief, he
said.
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- Omar, who has eluded the Americans during their nine-month
military campaign in Afghanistan, was believed to be hiding in mountains
in Uruzgan.
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- Hundreds of civilians are reported to have been killed
or wounded in Afghanistan since the United States began air strikes against
al-Qaeda and the Taliban in October last year, according to Afghan sources
and humanitarian agencies.
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- The United States has acknowledged that a number of bombs
have gone astray but has not provided any figures for civilian casualties.
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