KABUL/WASHINGTON, 22 December — In what may turn out to be an acute embarrassment for the United States, 65 people were killed when American planes bombed a convoy of Afghan elders, tribal chiefs and commanders heading for the inauguration of the war-ravaged country’s new government in Kabul.
The Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) said the jets bombed the convoy on Thursday night in eastern Afghanistan. Many others were injured when US warplanes attacked the vehicles on a road at Sato Kandaw, 25 km south of Gardez, capital of Paktia province, the report said.
"Several Afghan elders, tribal chiefs and commanders were among the victims," AIP quoted Sayed Yaqeen, an official of the Paktia tribal council, as saying.
Fourteen vehicles in the convoy were totally destroyed and, according to one source quoted in the report, the victims included a militia commander, Muhammadi Ibrahim, brother of Afghan commander Maulvi Jalaluddin Haqqani.
There was no immediate independent confirmation of the attack. But Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said that the convoy was a military target and she was unaware of reports that the bombing could have been a mistake.
"I don’t know about this report, but we did attack a convoy," she said. "Definitely it was a military target."
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that many had died in the strike on the convoy. "It was a large convoy, and there were a lot of people killed and a lot of vehicles damaged, or destroyed," he told a Pentagon briefing.
Meanwhile, Mulla Muhammad Omar, the reclusive head of the ousted Taleban militia, is safe and is at an unknown location in Afghanistan.
Mulla Abdul Shakour, ex-minister of communications and reconstruction, said all the Taleban leaders were safe, and threatened retaliation against any country that extradited any member of the Taleban leadership to the United States. He told reporters he had no idea where Osama Bin Laden was now. "We are not aware of the whereabouts of Osama," he said.
