U.S. planes bomb village; civilian casualties reported

KAKARAK, Afghanistan -- U.S. planes bombed a village in central Afghanistan on Monday after the U.S. military said American forces came under fire. Afghans said villagers were celebrating a wedding and that scores were killed and injured, including women and children.

The U.S. Central Command said Monday that officials from the U.S. military, the Afghan government and the U.S. Embassy in Kabul would head to the village to investigate the incident.

The Central Command acknowledged in a statement issued from its headquarters in Tampa, Fla., that attacks by B-52 and AC-130 aircraft north of Kandahar "may have resulted in civilian casualties."

"We understand that there were some civilian casualties in the operation, but we do not yet know how many casualties or how they occurred," U.S. military spokesman Col. Roger King said at Bagram air base. "The United States expresses its deepest sympathies to those who have lost their loved ones."

He said at least four of the injured were treated by U.S. forces.

Bismullah, communications chief of Uruzgan province, said Afghans in Kakarak, about 175 miles southwest of Kabul, were firing weapons in the air during the wedding as is common in rural Afghanistan. He said about 40 people were killed and 70 others wounded.

Noor Mohammed, leader of neighboring Gujran district, reported the same casualty figures and said Afghans were "upset because innocent people have died."

In the southern city of Kandahar, where many of the victims were taken, Afghans said the attack began about 2 a.m. and lasted for about two hours. A nurse at the Kandahar hospital, Sher Mohammed, said he heard that about 120 people were killed.

Hospital officials said most of the dead and injured were women and children. One of the injured, a 6-year-old girl named Paliko, was brought to the hospital still wearing her party dress. Villagers said all members of her family were killed.

Family members killed

Another injured child, 7-year-old Malika, lost her mother, father, a brother and a sister, according to neighbors who brought her to the hospital.

"We have many children who are injured and who have no family," nurse Mohammed Nadir said. "Their families are gone. The villagers brought these children and they have no parents. Everyone says that their parents are dead."

In Washington, Pentagon spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Jeff Davis said an Air Force B-52 bomber that attacked a cave complex in the same general area of Uruzgan province reported that one of its bombs went astray.

Officials said they could not immediately determine where the errant bomb landed.

He also said an Air Force AC-130 gunship also attacked anti-aircraft artillery in the same general area after coalition ground forces came under fire. Some of the anti-aircraft artillery could have fallen back to the ground and caused casualties, Davis said.

In Kandahar, one survivor, Abdul Qayyum, told reporters at the Mir Wais Hospital that after the attack, the Americans came to the area demanding to know "who fired on the helicopters."

"I said 'I don't know' and one of the soldiers wanted to tie my hands but someone said he is an old man and out of the respect they didn't," he said.

The injured also included Haji Mohammed Anwar, who Afghans said was a friend of President Hamid Karzai and one of the first prominent local figures who rose up against the former Taliban regime.

The bombing occurred in the same province where U.S. special forces killed 21 Afghans when they stormed buildings in Khas Uruzgan village on Jan. 23 looking for al-Qaida and Taliban forces. The Pentagon later acknowledged that none of those killed were al-Qaida or Taliban, but Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld cleared the Americans of any wrongdoing.

In an interview last week with The Associated Press, Karzai expressed concern that innocent Afghan civilians are being caught in the cross fire in the war on terrorism.

"I will definitely want the Afghan civilians, the Afghan villages to be immune from accidental damage," Karzai said. "To be sure that they do not receive accidental firing at them. To make sure that our women and children and villages don't suffer."

In areas of eastern and southern Afghanistan, where U.S. special forces and their coalition allies have focused their war against fugitive al-Qaida and Taliban elements, some villagers say they are being wrongly targeted for arrest or harassment as al-Qaida and Taliban suspects.