U.S. Strike Kills 2 Mine-Sniffing Dogs, U.N. Says

U.S. warplanes accidentally bombed a U.N. compound for mine-sniffing dogs and land mine clearance equipment in Kabul, killing two of the dogs, a U.N. official said Saturday.

No staff members were hurt in the strike on the Afghan capital, which destroyed at least two vehicles, said Stephanie Bunker, a spokeswoman for the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Afghanistan.

The dog compound is part of the U.N. Mine Action Program for Afghanistan. The strike occurred late Thursday, but news of it did not reach Pakistan until Saturday.

Bunker said the organization is still trying to assess the damage.

The dog program for Afghanistan is the largest in the world, with 200 mine-sniffing dogs--half of the canines in the world with such skills, Bunker said. The dogs are bred and raised for the sensitive job and then extensively trained to work with their human handlers.

The program employs 4,800 people in Afghanistan. “We want more details of what happened, but earlier they [United States] hit a compound and killed some of our technical people, and now this,” Bunker said.

In the early days of the airstrikes, a bomb that went astray killed four people in the offices of a nongovernmental organization that worked with the U.N. mine program.