KABUL, 8 December 2003 — The US military voiced regret yesterday for killing nine children in Afghanistan during a weekend airstrike it said was meant to target a guerrilla commander. President Hamid Karzai said he heard of the deaths with “deep sorrow” and that he had asked the coalition for an explanation.

The children were playing Saturday in the walled compound of a house at Makur, 85 km (50 miles) southwest of the town of Ghazni, when the US A-10 “tank buster” aircraft opened fire.

A statement from US military spokesman Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty regretted the loss of innocent life and said the “tragic incident” was being investigated.

The military said their bodies were found by troops of the US-led force near that of a “known terrorist”.

The US ambassador identified the man as Mullah Wazir, a local figure who bragged of attacks on aid workers, but Afghan officials disputed the assertion Mullah Wazir was killed.

“It has not been ascertained if Mullah Wazir was killed or not, but the house was his,” said Haji Assadullah, governor of Ghazni province. Mullah Wazir is believed responsible for the recent killing of two foreign contractors working on the Kabul-Kandahar-Herat ring road.

“He was a notorious ringleader of terrorist groups,” Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali told reporters. A ministry team was at the site in Watela, Gelan district, yesterday investigating the deaths.

The United Nations said it was “profoundly distressed” by the children’s deaths, which it said could have a negative impact among Afghans in the troubled south. It called for a swift investigation and for the results to be made public.

“This incident, which follows similar incidents, adds to a sense of insecurity and fear in the country,” UN Special Representative Lakhdar Brahimi said in a statement.

In the mountain village of Hutala, blood and children’s hats and shoes littered a field marked by dozens of small craters from the American aircraft’s guns.

“They were just playing ball, and then the shots came down,” said Hamidullah, a distraught villager who said his eight-year-old son, Habibullah, was among the dead.

About a dozen American soldiers stood guard yesterday outside the mud enclosure which locals said belonged to Wazir.

Hamidullah said the man killed along with the children was a cousin of Wazir called Abdul Hamid. Another villager said the mullah had left two weeks earlier.

The US ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, said Mullah Wazir was “a known financier, organizer and facilitator of terrorist activity” involved in attacks on Afghans working on the Kabul-Kandahar highway and aid workers.

Hours after the strike, suspected Taleban guerrillas kidnapped two Indians working on a US-funded road in neighboring Zabul province. Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali said Taleban commander Mullah Roazi, responsible for kidnapping a Turkish road engineer in late October, had been in a village close to where the Indians were abducted, but he did not know if he was to blame.

The kidnapping of the Indians was yet another blow to the single largest reconstruction scheme in Afghanistan, a road project which has been hit by a wave of deadly attacks.

The deaths of the children will likely add to the problems Washington has faced winning hearts and minds in the troubled south, where militants are most active, ahead of elections due next year.

The 11,500 US-led troops hunting Taleban and Al-Qaeda remnants in south and east Afghanistan often are supported by air power, and there have been a string of military mishaps.

In November, six civilians were killed in an airstrike in the southern province of Paktika, and nearly three weeks before that eight members of the same family, including children, died in a similar attack in the province of Nuristan. In July last year the Afghan government said 48 people had been killed and 117 hurt in Uruzgan province when a US AC-130 gunship attacked a wedding party. The US military said 34 died and 50 were hurt — mostly women and children — but said the aircraft had come under fire.

Warlord Arrested

A renegade Afghan warlord was arrested in a tribal area of Pakistan near the border with Afghanistan, a Pakistani official said yesterday.

However, a spokesman for the warlord, Bacha Khan Zadran, denied the claim, saying his boss had traveled to Pakistan for medical treatment and was not in custody.