U.S. Raid Apparently Kills 9 Children

KABUL, Afghanistan —  A U.S. airstrike Saturday apparently killed nine children as well as a suspected militant targeted in the raid, a U.S. military spokesman said.

A U.S. A-10 Warthog warplane struck a site south of Ghazni, in eastern Afghanistan, where a “known terrorist” was believed to be hiding about 10:30 a.m., Army Maj. Christopher E. West said.

“Following the attack, ground coalition forces searching the area found the bodies of both the intended target and those of nine children nearby,” he said.

The U.S. military was sending a team of investigators to the site to determine whether American forces were at fault, West said.

Coalition forces “will make every effort to assist the families of these innocent casualties and determine the cause of the civilian deaths,” he said from the U.S. headquarters at Bagram air base. “At the time we initiated the attack, we did not know there were children nearby.”

The target was a suspected militant believed responsible for the killing of two foreign contractors who were working on an Afghan road, West said. He did not identify the contractors and had no information about their deaths.

West said U.S. military officials “regret the loss of any innocent life, and we follow stringent rules of engagement to specifically avoid this type of incident while continuing to target terrorists who threaten the future of Afghanistan.”

Ahmad Zia Masood, a spokesman for the governor of Ghazni province, said the U.S. military targeted Mullah Wazir, a Taliban militant he said fired at U.S. helicopters Friday.

“The Americans recognized where the fire came from and used jets to bombard it” Saturday, he said. Masood said it was unclear if the 10 victims were Wazir and his family or their neighbors.

On Saturday, two Indian engineers working on the highway between Kabul, the capital, and the southern city of Kandahar were kidnapped, apparently after the U.S. bombing.

Masood said the U.S. attack took place at Atla village, just north of where the two Indian road engineers were kidnapped by suspected Taliban.

An aide to Afghan Interior Minister Ali Jalali said authorities had no contact with any kidnappers and had received no demands in return for the Indians’ freedom.

“But we know what kind of people they are,” said the aide, Helalludin, who like many Afghans uses only one name. “The police are sure” that they are Taliban, he said.

In October, Taliban militants abducted a Turkish engineer working on the road project and held him for a month while demanding the release of some Taliban prisoners. On Nov. 30, he was released unharmed.

Meanwhile Saturday, an explosion ripped through a bustling bazaar in the southern city of Kandahar, wounding 20 Afghans.

Speaking via satellite telephone, Taliban spokesman Mullah Abdul Hakim Latifi said the bomb was meant for U.S. soldiers shopping at the bazaar but went off later than planned.

An Afghan commander accused Taliban militants of deliberately hitting civilians.

“There was no American patrol at that time, and there is no government office there,” said the commander, Khan Mohammed. “It’s just a market.”

The bomb, apparently attached to a parked motorcycle or bicycle, exploded in front of a hotel about 12:30 p.m. in the city’s main commercial district. Six shops were leveled. Broken glass from the shattered hotel front littered the ground. The wounded included three children, Afghan state TV reported.

U.S. officials have been trying to track down remnants of the Taliban and Al Qaeda sympathizers in eastern and southern Afghanistan since ousting the hard-line Islamic regime two years ago. The militants have stepped up attacks in recent months, targeting foreign aid workers and perceived allies of the U.S.-led coalition.

International aid agencies have scaled down operations in Afghanistan’s south and east due to escalating violence, including the shooting death of a French aid worker for the United Nations last month.