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CIA-backed raid 'killed Afghan villagers' Tom Coghlan Military specialists with the CIA were among a US force accused of killing more than 50 civilians during the hunt for a Taliban commander in Afghanistan. Afghan community leaders in the Shindand district on the Iranian border say US forces destroyed several villages during the operation last month. The American mission was conducted outside the Nato command structure and was therefore subject to different rules of engagement. It is understood that the special forces unit included men known in America as CIA para-militaries, while support was provided by aircraft including the C130 Spectre gunship. "There were huge planes overhead," said Haji Abdul Rasool, a tribal elder from Bakhtabad village. "I saw the bodies of children in the wreckage. After two nights we found one man alive under the rubble." His account is corroborated by teams sent to the area by the United Nations, the Afghan government and Afghanistan's Independent Human Rights Commission."We have found 57 civilian deaths in this incident," said Khazi Gulam Nabi Hakak, a human rights commission investigator. "This includes 10 women and at least 11 children. Some were drowned escaping across a river." The UN said it had accounts of 49 civilian deaths and 1,600 families displaced by the violence. Staff at Shindand hospital said they treated 26 people, including women, children and the elderly. The operation has caused anxiety at Nato's headquarters in Brussels and in Kabul. US forces initially hailed the mission as a success. A US army press release claimed 136 Taliban fighters and one American soldier died in the fighting, while there were "no civilian casualties reported".
Local MPs and tribal elders say people were incensed when US troops searched their houses for a local man, Mullah Akhtar. These searches are a divisive issue among the Pashtun, for whom entering homes by force when women are inside dishonours the tribe. Maulvi Gul Akhmad, an MP from Shindand, said: "The people started to resist. The Americans made them Taliban. When the firing started the Americans withdrew and returned with aircraft to bombard the village." However, other Afghans said Taliban rebels incited the trouble. "Mullah Akhtar has a connection to the Taliban and he called in armed guys from Farah province," said one local source. A US army spokesman, Major Chris Belcher, denied that troops acted irresponsibly. "US forces were doing everything to clearly identify enemy firing positions before engaging them," he said. Prior to the incident in Shindand, 151 civilians were reported to have been killed in Afghanistan in the first four months of this year, 51 as a result of Nato and Afghan government action, 100 as a result of Taliban action. In another incident, a US marine commander said yesterday he had met and apologised to the families of 19 civilians killed by his men when they opened fire at random after their convoy was attacked by a suicide car bomber in March. Colonel John Nicholson said he felt "deeply ashamed" at the action of his men in eastern Afghanistan. ---------------------------------------------------
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