- A catastrophic error by carpet-bombing US Air Force
warplanes
was blamed yesterday for the deaths of about 150 unarmed Afghan civilians
in a densely populated frontline town caught up in the battle for the
Taliban
redoubt of Kunduz.
-
- Terrified refugees fleeing the town of Khanabad yesterday
told The Independent that American planes had bombed the area a few miles
from Kunduz daily since Thursday, seemingly oblivious to the fact that
the buildings they were bombing were civilian homes. All day yesterday,
huge plumes of smoke rose from the hills on the front lines near the
Taliban's
last northern stronghold as B-52 bombers continued to drop their loads
of bombs.
-
- "I saw 20 dead children on the streets," said
Zumeray, one of the refugees. "Forty people were killed yesterday
alone. I saw it with my own eyes. Some of them were burned by the bombs,
others were crushed by the walls and roofs of their houses when they
collapsed
from the blast."
-
- The relentless US pounding appears to have persuaded
the Taliban forces to surrender, provided the Northern Alliance fighters
pledge not to kill the mostly Arab and Pakistani fighters among them. The
Taliban offer was conditional on UN representatives monitoring the
surrender,
they said.
-
- The still-unverified reports of the killing of civilians
by US bombers may further complicate attempts to flush out Taliban and
al-Qa'ida fighters. The Taliban have also remained in control in their
southern stronghold, Kandahar, while US jets continued to pound them from
the skies. The bombing raids over the past two days were described as among
the heaviest in 43 days of war.
-
- Khanabad lies 10 miles from Kunduz, one of only two major
population centres in Afghanistan still under Taliban control. The refugees
said they had endured three days of bombing before the Taliban ordered
them out of their homes and told them they were free to cross the front
line.
-
- About 40,000 people live in Khanabad. The refugees said
all but a few, who stayed behind to guard the houses, fled yesterday.
"There
was no one in Khanabad to see what happened," said Farhod, 20, who
was travelling with his parents and his younger brothers and sisters.
"There
are a lot of dead people there."
-
- Zumeray had walked across the front line with his mother,
his sister and her children, after abandoning three months' worth of food
in Khanabad. The children had no shoes; they had been walking for seven
hours and their feet were raw.
-
- He spoke of seeing pieces of burned black bodies strewn
around where the bombs had landed. "When the bombs hit, there was
fire everywhere," he said. The first bombs came on Thursday, he said,
and the first house hit belonged to a man called Agha Padar.
-
- "It was God who brought this on Khanabad,"
said Farhod. "The people there have had to suffer so much. We had
so many problems when the Taliban came, and now this.
-
- "This is the work of the Taliban," said
Zumeray,
insisting that he was not angry with the Americans. "The Taliban were
so cruel, and God brought the Americans to help us."
-
- The refugees' faces were full of fear. They walked all
day, a steady stream of families fleeing their homes. Some had newborn
babies in their arms. They all told the same story. As they spoke, B-52s
circled lazily overhead and the huge explosions of the bombs echoed in
the mountains. The children grew nervous at the sound.
-
- While most support the attacks on the Taliban, one man
shouted angrily that the Americans were wrong to kill civilians.
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