A US air strike targeting a "known terrorist" in eastern Afghanistan apparently killed nine children, the American military said yesterday, in what could be the latest in a series of military mishaps that has outraged the Afghan population.
The suspected Taliban militant also was killed in the attack during which an American A-10 aircraft struck a site south of Ghazni city, where the man was believed to be hiding at about 10:30am on Saturday, Army Major Christopher E. West said.
Ghazni is 160km southwest of the capital, Kabul.
"At the time we initiated the attack, we did not know there were children nearby," he said from the US military headquarters at Bagram, north of Kabul.
US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said in the capital that a former Taliban commander, Mullah Wazir, was the target of the attack, saying he "had bragged of his personal involvement in attacks on innocent Afghan citizens."
Khalilzad said he was "deeply saddened" by the "tragic loss of innocent life," and had spoken to Afghan President Hamid Karzai about the incident.
Jawaid Khan, the Ghazni governor's secretary, had different casualty figures, saying that eight children and two men were killed. He said Wazir was not killed.
"The Americans wanted to bomb Mullah Wazir, but they bombed a different house," Khan told reporters. "The people there are very afraid. They have no idea why the Americans bombed their village."
During the Taliban regime, Wazir was a local district commander, and was not known as a major player in the Taliban resistance.
West called the target a "known terrorist" believed responsible for the killing in October of two foreign contractors who were working on an Afghan road. Two Indian engineers were reported kidnapped while working on the road on Saturday.
Major Ralph Marino, another spokesman at Bagram, would give no further information about the children or the suspected militant. He was also unable to provide details of the contractors' deaths.
Military investigators were going to the scene to try to determine if US forces were at fault, West said. Afghan officials said the site was sealed off by coalition forces yesterday.
The 11,500 US-led forces hunting Taliban and al-Qaeda remnants in south and east Afghanistan often are supported by air power, and there have been a string of accidental attacks killing civilians, which have angered many Afghans.
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