Locals reject US account of Afghan convoy attack

23 Dec, 2001 06:47 PM5 mins to read

ASMANI KILAI - Local Afghans have contested US assertions that its planes attacked a convoy of al Qaeda leaders, telling Reuters at the scene on Saturday the dozens of dead were innocent villagers and tribal elders.

Residents of Asmani Kilai in eastern Paktia province said the strikes, lasting seven hours from Thursday night into Friday, killed 50 to 60 people and destroyed 15 vehicles from a convoy of tribal elders bound for Kabul for the inauguration on Saturday of the interim government led by Hamid Karzai.

About 10 houses and a mosque were also destroyed and several villagers not with the convoy were also killed, they said.

However, US officials insisted the convoy had opened fire on US aircraft just before it was bombed and had been carrying leaders of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network.

Earlier reports said 65 people were killed.

"The people who got hit were going to congratulate Karzai on the transfer of power," villager Khodai Noor told Reuters Television in the first account of the bombing from the scene.

"There are no members of al Qaeda or supporters of bin Laden here," he added, suggesting a local warlord might deliberately have misinformed US forces about the convoy to settle a score.

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 Taleban or fighters from bin Laden's al Qaeda group.

"I will tell you, having been in touch with my headquarters, that at this point we believe it was a good target," US General Tommy Franks, the commander of US forces in the region, told reporters in Kabul after Karzai was sworn in.

In the United States, a spokesman for US Central Command told Reuters in response to the accounts from Asmani Kilai: "We confirm again that the convoy was a military target."

But a Pentagon spokesman later told Reuters US military officials had reached the spot to look into the villagers' claims: "I would not call it an investigation. It is part of a process we always carry out when there are reports like this."

In Kabul, Franks said he had also received reports that a US aircraft had been fired on from the convoy.

Villagers contested that account, saying the convoy had set out for the Afghan capital from the town of Khost with tribal elders who were not carrying weapons.

Villager Noor alleged the convoy had been diverted from its intended route by a hostile local commander, whom he named as Pacha Khan. He alleged that Khan had then told the Americans that the vehicles were carrying al Qaeda members.

The village, in the Ozi district of Paktia province, sits on barren hills and its houses were reduced to rubble.

Six wrecked 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 pm on Thursday (5.30 am Friday NZT) and 4 am on Friday (12.30 pm Friday NZT).

"Why is this tyranny happening to us?" asked Haji Khyal Khan, who said five members of his family had been killed.

Locals picked through the rubble of their homes retrieving what possessions they could, including a tattered carpet.

"There were no terrorists. They destroyed a whole village and we've lost everything," said villager Agha Mohammad.

Karzai, speaking at a news conference in Kabul before the villagers' accounts emerged, said he would check reports of the attack but did not believe tribal chiefs had been bombed.

"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."

One US embassy official in Kabul, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said: "We apparently had evidence that this convoy had al Qaeda forces. We circled the convoy.

"I'm told by Centcom (Central Command) that we were fired on twice by the convoy using anti-aircraft missiles, which they took as a hostile act and proceeded to attack the convoy."

But Abdullah Jan, a spokesman for the shura (council) of the Nayazain tribe in Khost, urged Karzai to order an inquiry, the private, Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) said.

The victims included Maulvi Mian Jan who was travelling to Kabul at Karzai's invitation, AIP quoted Jan as saying.

"He was a tribal chief. There was no Taleban or any al Qaeda fighter in our convoy. Why was it bombed?" he told AIP.

AIP said the dead included tribal elders and former mujahideen commanders. It said one of the dead was "commander" Mohammad Ibrahim, a brother of well-known former mujahideen commander Jalaluddin Haqqani.

Haqqani fought against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s but switched sides to become the tribal affairs minister in the Taleban government.

A local resident told the BBC that the dead included Naeem Kochi, head of the Ahmadzai tribe, a man who has changed sides frequently and had been linked with the Taleban in the past.

- REUTERS

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