fghanistan's interim leader, Hamid Karzai, is to ask the US to halt aerial attacks on an eastern province where a convoy of guests to his inauguration was bombed with heavy losses, a local elder said yesterday.
"Mr Karzai has promised to ... ask for the halt of America's bombardment," Abdul Hakim Munib, a representative and spokesman for Paktia's 50-member tribal council, told a news conference.
The convoy, apparently betrayed, came under attack in eastern Paktia province last Thursday as it was en route to the inauguration of Karzai's government at the weekend, leaving about 65 people dead, witnesses and survivors said.
"[Karzai] said he has appointed a team to verify the issue and find the culprits," Munib said in Kabul.
Locals said enemies of those in the convoy may have passed on information on its whereabouts to the Pentagon, calling in planes to bomb it.
US officials have insisted the convoy had opened fire on US aircraft just before it was bombed and had been carrying leaders of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network and the former fundamentalist Taliban rulers.
Flanked by bearded and turbaned elders of the council, Munib said local concern about the bombing topped the agenda discussed in a meeting with Karzai a day earlier.
"The tribal council of Paktia urges the interim administration of Afghanistan and the world alliance against terrorism to stop bombarding ... Paktia," Munib said.
He said 15 of the 65 people killed in the convoy belonged to various tribes from the Khost region of Paktia and were en route to Kabul to witness the transfer of power after notifying a brother of Karzai of their plans.
Munib said people hostile to the elders in the convoy had incorrectly informed the US that the travellers were supporters of the Taliban and members of bin Laden's al-Qaeda.
"These were all white-bearded tribal elders who wanted to congratulate Karzai and were mistakenly bombed," Munib said.
"America can answer about the firing by its planes," he said.
Swiftly shifting alliances in Afghanistan, where defections from the Taliban were crucial to their defeat, could contribute to confusion over just who was in the convoy.
Munib, himself a former deputy Cabinet minister in the Taliban and among the first to desert their government after the US bombing campaign began on Oct. 7, is an example of those changing alliances.
Residents of Asmani Kilai in eastern Paktia province said the strikes, lasting seven hours last Thursday night and into Friday, killed about 65 people in the convoy.
The village, in the Ozi district of Paktia province, sits on barren hills and its houses were reduced to rubble.
There were only 40 survivors in the convoy of about 20 to 25 vehicles carrying some 100 people.
The US Central Command, which is running the campaign in Afghanistan, was looking into the survivors' reports.
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