Feb. 20, 2011
NATO Airstrike Is Said to Kill Afghan Civilians
By Alissa J. Rubin
JALALABAD, Afghanistan -- NATO airstrikes killed at least 35 people in a remote mountainous area of eastern Afghanistan last week in an attack that NATO officers say was a successful mission against Taliban insurgents, but that Afghan officials have condemned as causing mass civilian casualties.
A joint NATO and Afghan assessment team will go to the area Monday to investigate the casualty allegations.
Meanwhile the death toll rose to 40 in the attack on a bank [1] in Jalalabad on Saturday where soldiers and police officers were lining up to collect their pay. Officials said three of the seven gunmen were from Pakistan, and the one assailant who was captured said he was trained by the Haqqani network, a Pakistan-based terrorist group allied with the Taliban.
The NATO airstrike accused of causing civilian casualties involved helicopters and F-15 jets and took place late Thursday night and into the early morning on Friday in the Ghaziabad district of Kunar Province.
NATO and Afghan officials agree that the area is heavily infiltrated by insurgents. Beyond that, their accounts differ on almost every aspect of the raid.
The Kunar governor, Said Fazlullah Wahidi, said that officials had not been able to visit the area to independently evaluate the casualty claims because it was too insecure, but that reports from residents indicated that women and children were killed as well as some insurgents.
"According to our information 64 people were killed: 13 armed opposition, 22 women, 26 boys and 3 old men," Mr. Wahidi said.
President Hamid Karzai strongly condemned the attack, saying he had spoken with provincial authorities and elders several times in the last two days and was told that the dead and wounded included women and children.
Dr. Asadullah Fazli, the chief doctor at the provincial hospital in the capital, Asadabad, said the hospital had received at least nine wounded people from the area who had been hurt in fighting there, including three women, four children and two men. There were several other military operations in the area over the last few days, so it was not clear which one caused those injuries.
One of the patients, Mirajedi, a 2-year-old girl, had to have her leg amputated because of shrapnel injuries, Mirza Mohammed Khan, a doctor at the hospital, said Sunday.
Another patient there, Hamidullah, 21, who like many Afghans uses only one name, described an air attack and subsequent occupation of his village, Haigal, by Afghan Army soldiers over the last three days and said that 26 of his family members were killed or wounded. He conceded that the area had been used to launch attacks on NATO convoys.
"I am not sad that I lost my family members," he said. "They died for God, and I am also willing to die. If the infidels kill me, then it is something that God wishes. These people will, I am sure, God willing, be defeated. I hope God destroys Americans."
The NATO account said the assault began around 7 p.m. Thursday and lasted for five hours. The target was Taliban fighters who were gathering on a hillside, said Rear Adm. Gregory J. Smith, the strategic communications chief. After reviewing footage of the assault and intelligence, he said that he saw no sign that civilians or civilian houses were attacked, but that it was not possible to rule it out entirely.
"What you see on the footage is that this is a very remote area, an area along steep inclines and away from any built up village or structures," he said. "I saw no evidence to suggest there were any children there," he said. "A group of individuals, Taliban, had gotten together for a meeting and as the assault was under way they dispersed down the hillside and into the nooks and crannies in the valley.
"What you see on the helicopter footage is teams: four individuals with weapons taken out; another group of 10 to 12, as if they are getting up together for a meeting; then a series of ones and twos and threes. They disperse and then regroup."
He said that in the course of the assault, eavesdropping equipment captured the fighters' conversations and they discussed calling local authorities and telling them there were civilian casualties, so that they would prevail on the coalition to stop shooting. "That's where the civilian casualty thing came from," Admiral Smith said.
Meanwhile in Jalalabad, it was a day of shock and mourning as the full measure of the bank attack began to become clear. The vast majority of the 40 victims were members of the police, the army and the border police, who were at the Kabul Bank branch here to collect their monthly salary.
At a news conference here on Sunday, officials displayed photographs taken by the bank's security cameras that showed the seven gunmen picking out security personnel and shooting them at close range. Police officers, soldiers and civilians can be seen crawling on their hands and knees trying to escape; a border policeman lies flattened on the floor as a gunman trains his weapon on him and pulls the trigger.
In addition to the three Pakistanis, three assailants were from Afghanistan -- one each from Nangarhar, Kunar and Laghman Provinces -- Gul Agha Shirzai, the governor of Nangarhar Province, said at the news conference. He did not mention the origin of the seventh assailant. Six of the attackers were killed at the scene.
The one caught by the police appeared at the news conference in a blood-stained salwar kameez, the traditional loose pants and tunic, his hair uncombed and a glazed look in his eyes. It was unclear if the blood was from wounds he had received during the attack or if he had been beaten during his capture or interrogation.
Sounding affectless and exhausted, he said his name was Zar Hajam Khan and that he came from North Waziristan, a tribal area of Pakistan where the Haqqani network is based. "I studied in the Haqqani madrasa for three months and they trained and equipped me and my friend," he said.
He named at least three people who had helped him prepare for the attack, including the man who brought him to the bank on Saturday.
He said he first came to Jalalabad several weeks ago when a man who helped organize the attack took him to observe the bank. "They gave us training and instructions about how to enter and how to attack, and they gave us the A.N.A. uniforms," he said, referring to the Afghan Army uniforms the attackers wore.
Then he went to Peshawar, Pakistan, and only returned to Afghanistan on Wednesday, crossing the border at Torkham without being searched, he said.
As the attack was taking place, he said, he was wounded and asked a comrade for advice. The comrade told him to leave his gun and try to escape.
Mr. Khan walked down the bank's stairs, still wearing a suicide vest, and was caught by the police.
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/20/world/asia/20afghanistan.html