U.N. Calls for Inquiry Into Afghan Attack

The top United Nations official in Afghanistan called Sunday for a swift investigation into a U.S. airstrike that left nine Afghan children dead, saying that such attacks would increase Afghans’ feeling of insecurity and fear.

In a statement, the U.S. military said Sunday that it regretted the deaths and was conducting its own probe into the bombing Saturday that targeted what a U.S. Army spokesman called a known terrorist.

Ground forces who checked the scene of the airstrike later discovered the bodies of nine children near the dead terror suspect, the military said. But Afghans contended that the Taliban militant whom U.S. forces wanted to kill had escaped.

“This incident, which follows similar incidents, adds to the sense of insecurity and fear in the country,” Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations special representative to Afghanistan, said in a statement.

He urged the military to make public the results of its investigation, saying: “The protection of civilians is an obligation that must be observed by all.”

Brahimi said he was “profoundly distressed” by the incident.

The children were playing in the walled compound of a home early Saturday morning when an American A-10 Warthog aircraft bombed the village of Hutala, in the province of Ghazni, 80 miles southwest of the Afghan capital.

Children’s hats and shoes littered a bloody field cratered by gunfire Sunday, Associated Press reported from Hutala.

“They were just playing ball, and then the shots came down,” said Hamidullah, a distraught villager who said his 8-year-old son, Habibullah, was among those killed, AP reported. Like many Afghans, the family members use only one name.

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said the intended target, a former local Taliban commander named Mullah Wazir, was killed in the attack, a claim Afghan officials and residents disputed.

A U.S. military spokesman at Bagram air base, north of Kabul, said Wazir’s body had been found near the site of the attack. He is believed to be responsible for the recent killings of two foreign workers building the Kandahar-to-Kabul highway.

However, a spokesman for the governor of Ghazni said the airstrike had missed Wazir.

“The Americans wanted to bomb Mullah Wazir but they bombed a different house,” Jawaid Khan said.

“The people there are very afraid. They have no idea why the Americans bombed their village.”

Khalilzad said he was “deeply saddened” by the “tragic loss of innocent life” and said he had spoken to interim Afghan President Hamid Karzai about the attack. A senior U.S. military officer and Afghan officials were meeting Sunday with the bereaved families in Hutala, he said.

A commission was being set up to investigate the deaths, U.S. Army Maj. Christopher E. West said at Bagram air base. He said American troops had collected “extensive intelligence” on Wazir’s whereabouts in the village. He described Wazir as a “known terrorist.”

“At the time we initiated the attack, we did not know there were children nearby,” West said in a statement.

A statement released Sunday by U.S. Central Command noted that “coalition forces follow stringent rules of engagement to specifically avoid this type of incident while continuing to target terrorists who threaten the future of Afghanistan.”

One analyst said Sunday that such tragedies underscore the dilemma of U.S. forces who are trying to present America as a humanitarian nation but who also do not want to let enemies escape.

“The hard part isn’t getting insurgents,” said Loren Thompson, an expert on military strategy and technology at the Lexington Institute, a nonpartisan think tank in Arlington, Va., that focuses on national security issues. “The hard part is maintaining your humanity as you do it.”

U.S. foes in Afghanistan and Iraq are trying to exploit the fact that civilian casualties harm the image of the United States with local residents, he said.

“It has become common practice both in Afghanistan and Iraq for insurgents to operate in close proximity to civilians as a way to try to dissuade attacks on them,” he said, adding that the “sad reality

At the same time, an expert on military technology expressed some surprise at reports that U.S. forces employed an A-10, known for its ability to wipe out a broad swath of ground targets, if U.S. forces were aiming for one individual.

“I have seen them in action, and they can lay down a pretty withering amount of ordnance,” said William H. Kincade, a military strategy and technology expert at American University’s School of International Service in Washington, noting the aircraft’s original purpose: attacking Warsaw Pact forces during the Cold War.

Kincade said that the initial press accounts, suggesting that U.S. forces were in pursuit of one individual, raised questions such as, “Why were they using this aircraft? Why weren’t they using ground troops? ... I hate to say it, but the A-10 is kind of overkill if you’re trying to get one person.”

Thompson said that virtually all targeting plans in the circumstances U.S. forces now confront come with an element of doubt: “Given the state of our technology we can be more precise than ever before, but there’s always a significant element of uncertainty in any targeting plan,” he said.

The children’s deaths occurred in a mainly Pushtun region that blames the U.S.-led coalition for widespread instability and banditry in the south and east of the country.

One-third of Afghanistan, including Ghazni, is off-limits to aid workers as the 11,500 soldiers hunt for supporters of the former Taliban regime and Al Qaeda.

The security vacuum and the coalition’s mishaps have created a situation in which Afghans are increasingly looking to the Taliban era as a time of stability because the regime brought law and order.

The worst attack on civilians in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban regime in December 2001 occurred in July 2002, when an American AC-130 gunship attacked a wedding party in Oruzgan province after it had come under fire, the military said.

As many as 48 people were killed and 117 suffered injuries. Afghans traditionally fire weapons to celebrate a marriage.

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Times special correspondent Ghafour reported from Kabul and staff writer Peterson from Washington.