16 die in strike against Afghan warlord.

This is typical of Bomber McNeil's tactics, tactics that work to incense rural tribes and guarantee that the insurgents have fighters for the future. The areas cannot be held usually and when the forces leave Hakmatyar and his Taliban allies simply return.


16 die in strike against Afghan warlord

16 Die in Strike Against Fugitive Afghan Warlord; 7 Police Killed in Poppy Field

AMIR SHAH
AP News

Apr 07, 2008 11:31 EST

U.S. and Afghan forces attacked a remote village in a mountainous region of northeastern Afghanistan following reports that an infamous insurgent leader was in the area, a governor said Monday. At least 16 people were killed.

Gov. Tamim Nuristani said Afghan soldiers told him Gulbuddin Hekmatyar was meeting with top deputy Kashmir Khan in the Dohabi district of Nuristan province on Sunday, sparking a fierce bombardment. The Defense Ministry said Hekmatyar wasn't the target but that fighters from his group, Hezb-i-Islami, had gathered in the village alongside Taliban militants.

Other provincial leaders said many civilians were killed in the hours-long clash, which included airstrikes in the remote villages of Shok and Kendal. Nuristani said it was too early to know if any of the 16 killed were civilians. His casualty figures came from police who had reached the remote district.

U.S. officials and the Afghan Defense Ministry have denied that any civilians were killed.

The competing claims were impossible to reconcile because the fighting took part in a remote and dangerous part of the country. U.S. officials say that militants falsely claim civilian casualties as a strategy to weaken the international military coalition and the Afghan government.

In southern Afghanistan, meanwhile, Taliban fighters attacked and killed seven police eradicating a field of opium poppies in rural Kandahar province, the police chief said. Five militants also died in the clash.

The Afghan Defense Ministry said the battle in Nuristan, a lawless region that borders Pakistan, targeted a terrorist center that included a suicide bomb cell. It said it would release casualty figures later.

Hekmatyar heads the militant group Hezb-i-Islami, which has links with the Taliban and al-Qaida, though Hekmatyar has denied direct ties with those groups.

He briefly served as prime minister of Afghanistan in the mid-1990s and is infamous for bombarding the capital, Kabul, during the country's civil war, killing an untold number of civilians.

Zahir Murad, deputy spokesman for the Defense Ministry, said the bombardment targeted fighters from Hezb-i-Islami and the Taliban who were gathering to plan attacks. He said he had no information that Hekmatyar was present.

The chief of Nuristan's provincial council, Rahmatullah Rashid, said 19 people were killed in the battle — all civilians. He said six children, five women and eight men died. He said he didn't have a report of how many militants were killed. Rashid's information was relayed to him by villagers via radio communications.

U.S. Marine 1st Lt. Richard Ulsh said coalition forces have "received no reports of civilian casualties at this time as a result of that conflict."

Mohammad Farooq, the province's criminal investigations director, said 20 people were killed, including civilians. He said that some two dozen houses were destroyed.

In Kandahar province, meanwhile, seven police were killed during a Taliban attack on a poppy eradication team in Maiwand district, said provincial police chief Sayad Agha Saqib. Five militants also died, he said.

The Afghan government eradicated almost 40,000 acres of poppies last year, but the country's farmers still grew 477,000 acres of poppies, a record haul. Attacks on poppy eradication teams are common.

Afghanistan last year produced 93 percent of the world's opium, the main ingredient in heroin.

In nearby Helmand province, two police were killed when they hit a roadside bomb while escorting engineers to repair a mobile phone tower Monday in Sangin district, said provincial police chief Mohammad Hussein Andiwal.

At least 10 mobile phone towers have been attacked in the last month following a warning by the Taliban to shut down the towers at night. Taliban fighters fear they are being tracked by the U.S. and NATO militaries by signals from their mobile phones. In response, phone companies have curtailed service at night throughout the south.

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Associated Press reporter Noor Khan contributed to this report from Kandahar.

Choppers and Collateral Damage

The use of air support in urban neighborhoods are bound to create civilian casualties. The US cares more about responding in a way that reduces chances of taking any casualties itself rather than avoiding civilian casualties. The result is simply to act as a recruiter for insurgents and terrorists.

U.S. choppers kill ... who? Enemy or innocents?
By Hannah Allam and Jenan Hussein | McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Sat, July 21, 2007 BAGHDAD, Iraq — This much is agreed upon: at least six Iraqis died overnight Saturday when American attack helicopters pounded a cluster of homes in a dusty, nondescript neighborhood on the northern outskirts of Baghdad.

But the story of why those homes were targeted and who was killed depends on the storyteller.

The U.S. military said the dead were insurgents and the homes in the Husseiniya district probably served as weapons depots; troops observed seven or more secondary explosions after the air assault. By the military's tally, six fighters were killed and five wounded.

Iraqi residents told a different version: the dead came from two Shiite Muslim families who lived in an area controlled by the powerful Mahdi Army militia. The bodies pulled from the rubble, locals say, were ordinary parents killed with their children in the middle of the night. Locals counted 11 corpses - two men, two women, and seven children. Another 10 were injured. Some Iraqi authorities put the death toll as high as 18.

In Iraq, where new bombings occur before authorities can even investigate the previous day's violence, the truth about Husseiniya might never come to light. Roadblocks erected around the neighborhood prevented reporters from reaching the scene.

"Lies, lies, lies," sputtered Salam al Rubaiye, 35, a computer technician who lives in Husseiniya and works in Sadr City. "The Americans always try to change the truth, especially when it concerns the Sadrists," the collective name for followers of the Mahdi Army commander, cleric Muqtada al Sadr.

Rubaiye visited the scene of the air strike twice Saturday. He first showed up early in the morning when, he said, volunteers were still digging the corpses of women and children from the rubble. Later, he brought a camera and snapped 14 photos.

They showed several piles of cinderblock where homes once stood. The interior of a severely damaged home showed only the detritus of family life: a potted plant, a wall hanging, a refrigerator, an electrical generator. "For Sale" was written in Arabic on the only surviving wall of one home.

Rubaiye also e-mailed two short cell-phone video clips that showed at least seven bodies swathed in blankets, some with grayish feet sticking out at the ends. Two of the bundles were tiny, as if they shrouded young children.

Residents said they'd finished retrieving the dead by 8 a.m., and that two young girls were still missing.

"I took out with my own hands the bodies of two young children, two men, two adult women and four little girls," said Bassem al Musawi, 30, who lives in the neighborhood. "I don't know why the Americans bombed these homes. I know one was the house of Abu Mustafa. He's a very poor man with only one boy and the rest of his family are girls. And he didn't even have a rifle."

In an e-mail response to questions on the incident, an American military spokesman wrote that U.S. troops had come under small-arms fire from gunmen in the area just before midnight. The troops "returned fire and attack helicopters, armed with missiles, engaged the structure the gunmen were firing from."

When three of the gunmen fled into another building, the military statement continued, "attack aircraft dropped a bomb on that structure and observed at least seven secondary explosions, likely caused by explosives and munitions stored inside the building." Iraqi police who inspected the site reported to the Americans that the home was destroyed, six insurgents were killed and five wounded.

Presented with the dueling accounts, both sides modified their versions.

Iraqi residents acknowledged hearing gunfire before the air strikes. And the U.S. military no longer insisted that only militants perished, though a spokesman emphasized that the air raid was a self-defense measure.

"The adversary is ruthless and puts no value on human life and will endanger innocent civilians - women, children - by hiding and cowering in buildings they take over," read a statement from Lt. Col. Michael Donnelly, spokesman for U.S. forces north of Baghdad.

Burials were planned, though it was unclear who had custody of the bodies. By late Saturday, there were plans for a large Mahdi Army demonstration to accompany the expected funeral procession.

"They say they target the terrorists, so where are they?" asked a 45-year-old Husseiniya resident who identified himself only as Abu Ghufran. "Most of the dead are women and children. There is no justice in this life."

Hussein is a special correspondent for McClatchy Newspapers. Special correspondent, Laith Hammoudi, contributed.


Posted on Sat, July 21, 2007