Villagers Near Targeted Caves Voice Plight

Villagers from the remote Afghan outpost of Kama Ado say they don’t know how far it is to Tora Bora--only that it’s a 10-hour hike to the nest of caves and trenches that Osama bin Laden adopted as a hide-out and headquarters.

That may have been too near. Scores of villagers from Kama Ado and other sleepy hamlets in the foothills of the White Mountain range in eastern Afghanistan were believed killed in U.S. overnight bombing raids on Tora Bora, Afghan officials and witnesses said.

Local officials have said for more than a week that hundreds of fervent followers of Bin Laden are holed up in Tora Bora--and that the elusive terror mastermind could be among them. On Thursday, Kama Ado village elders made the long, dusty trek by foot to Jalalabad, the nearest major city, where they told reporters that they wanted the world to know they weren’t terrorists.

At the governor’s palace, the men pleaded for an end to nighttime attacks by U.S. bombers on the hunt for Bin Laden. Their livestock had been killed, they said, and their water supply ruined.

But none of their people had died.

Farmer Heard Cries of Victims

“We are poor people,” Lalgul, a 45-year-old farmer from a nearby village, said Saturday. He said he had raced to Kama Ado when he heard the cries of victims. “We can barely feed ourselves. This must have been a mistake.”

Late Saturday, the commander of the military in Jalalabad said that at least 20 people were dead in the dawn raid on Kama Ado. Witnesses who traveled to the hospital in Jalalabad said more may have died. Scores were reported killed in other villages.

Meanwhile, in a dingy hospital ward, a skinny man named Khalil stared at the ceiling from his iron cot, bloody rags at his side. That he is alive, he said, is a trick of timing: When the bombs fell, he had slipped outside to relieve himself. He watched his house collapse. He was a father and a husband. He had 12 relatives. All died Saturday, he said.

“I am the only one left now,” said Khalil, a 25-year-old who, like many Afghans, uses only one name. His eyes welled with tears. “All my family is gone. The village is no more.”

The fresh spate of bombings comes amid nagging worries that as many as 2,000 members of Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network and hard-line Taliban forces have taken up residence in Tora Bora. The suspected terrorists--many of whom are foreigners--fled Jalalabad more than two weeks ago as invading tribal warriors swept into town. The forces at Tora Bora are said to be stocked with plenty of weapons and enough food to last through months of siege.

Built by rebel Afghan soldiers during the war against the former Soviet Union, the honeycomb of tunnels and chambers has historically stood immune to attack. Equipped with heating and ventilation, linked by a network of tunnels and trenches, the caves are big enough to house families and accommodate military trucks.

Tora Bora was a longtime haunt of Bin Laden, who as a young man fought the Soviets in the countryside around Jalalabad. Officials believe that the Saudi militant may have retreated into the caves to evade capture.

“He’s probably in that general area,” Vice President Dick Cheney said in an interview last week on ABC’s “Good Morning America” program. “He’s got what he believes to be fairly secure facilities, caves underground. It’s an area he’s familiar with. He’s got a large number of fighters with him, probably, a fairly secure personal security force that he has some degree of confidence in.”

Villagers from the desperately poor hamlets near Tora Bora were earning extra money, local military officials said, by running errands for the exiled foreigners. Village women washed their clothes. Men hauled large barrels of water up to the caves.

Tora Bora Inhabitants Are Asked to Leave

This weekend, an elaborate dance of tribal diplomacy creaked slowly forward in Tora Bora. A delegation from the Nangarhar provincial government reportedly ventured out to the cave complex, met with the suspected terrorists and asked them to leave. The inhabitants of Tora Bora sent word back: They’ll think it over until Monday, then issue a reply.

When it comes to Tora Bora, the local commanders have something to lose: They have urged the United States to pump up their opposition forces with donations of guns and money. With the support of the United States, they’ve said, they could hunt down Bin Laden.

“I fully support the bombing,” Haji Mohammed Zaman, commander of the military in Nangarhar province, said Saturday. But in the next breath, he changed his mind: “I contacted U.S. authorities and said, ‘Your bombing is off the mark. Stop the bombing.’ ”

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Times staff writer Edmund Sanders in Washington contributed to this report.