US soldiers should not be held responsible for the deaths of six children during a raid on a suspected militant's compound where he had stored hundreds of mortars, anti-tank mines and rocket-propelled grenades, the US military said.
The raid in eastern Paktia province last Friday and another the next day in neighboring Ghazni in which nine children died have drawn condemnation from ordinary Afghans and deep concern from the UN and other groups.
The US military has apologized for the Ghazni attack -- a massive air assault aimed at a former Taliban district commander who appears to have escaped. But spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Bryan Hilferty said on Thursday that US forces could not safeguard all civilians if they are living with known suspects.
PHOTO: AP
The Paktia compound was used as a weapons storage depot used by Mullah Jalani, a suspected associate of Taliban ally Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, and the six children and two adults were found crushed to death under a wall after US fire and secondary explosions leveled much of the building.
"Certainly, we followed the law of proportionality in this com-pound," Hilferty said.
"From the compound, they were shooting at us with machine guns. Jalani has more ammunition at his house then the coalition keeps at Bagram [the US military headquarters]," he said.
Hundreds of 107mm rockets, mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, anti-tank mines and anti-personnel mines were found at the compound, along with several howitzers. Jalani was not at the site during the raid, but nine other people were arrested.
Hilferty said earlier the military was "not completely responsible for the consequences" if civilians surrounded themselves with ammunition used by a known militant.
The recent deaths both occurred in the Pashtun-dominated southeast and risked further alienating the country's largest ethnic group -- from which the Taliban emerged, and still draws its main support.
Afghan government-run TV news broadcasts have not mentioned the children's deaths in Paktia. A government spokesman, Hamid Hilmi, said it was not a deliberate attempt to keep the news from the Afghan people.
Nonetheless, the two incidents have triggered outrage among many Afghans.
"This will have very bad consequences for the Americans in the future," said 20-year-old Kabul shopkeeper Wahid Ullah.
"People will grow to hate them, day by day," he said.
Hilferty described the loss of innocent life as a "tragedy," and said the deaths were troubling to coalition forces as well.
"Most of us are parents so most of us feel badly when children die," he said.
"It affects the soldiers of the coalition," he said.
The UN, which had already warned that civilian casualties could drive Afghans into the arms of militants, sharpened its criticism.
"We believe that observance of international humanitarian law would help in avoiding these kinds of situations," said Manoel de Almeida e Silva, UN spokesman in Kabul.
Asked whether the UN believed the US-led coalition was in breach of those laws -- including an obligation to protect civilians -- he said: "It's up to them to decide whether they are observing all of its aspects."
Almeida e Silva said the UN's concerns were passed to new US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad.
Jalani was not among the nine people arrested at the Paktia site, 19km east of Gardez, Hilferty said.
Also, a raid by several hundred US and Afghan soldiers that began Tuesday in the eastern province of Khost has failed to produce any weapons or arrests. On Dec. 2, the military launched Operation Avalan-che, which it said involved 2,000 troops in southern and eastern Afghanistan and was the largest offensive since the Afghan war ended.
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