'They were shooting at people running away'
By Catherine Philp, South Asia Correspondent



THE celebrations were in full swing, with hundreds of guests preparing for a wedding singing and dancing in the beam of a tractor’s headlights. Out of the darkness a warplane descended, sending rockets exploding through the crowd.
Survivors of the party in Kakarak, southern Afghanistan, yesterday described the events after they came under fire in the early hours of Monday from American gunships. They told of a sustained attack from the air, with wedding guests being chased and shot dead as they tried to escape.

“The first rocket hit the women’s section. The second rocket hit the men’s section,” Ahmed Jan Agha, a musician who was playing at the wedding, told Associated Press in Kakarak. “Then everybody started running. The aeroplanes were shooting rockets at the people running away. They were chasing us.”

Many of those who died had been cut down by shrapnel as they tried to seek shelter from the barrage. “A piece of iron sliced the woman’s neck in front of me. In a split- second it was not on her body,” Naseema, a 15-year-old survivor, told Reuters from hospital in Kandahar, where she was taken for treatment.

“It was like an abattoir,” another survivor, who would not give her name, said. “There was blood everywhere.”

Those who had fled said that they hid in nearby orchards and fields for four hours as the rockets continued to rain down. Villagers said that when the aircraft finally disappeared into the darkness, US troops accompanied by Afghan fighters arrived in the village and told everyone to go inside their houses, allowing only the wounded to leave.

Twenty-five of those who died were members of one family, attending the party at the home of Mohammed Sherif, whose son, Abdul Malik, was to marry the next day. Mr Sherif, whose brother is a close ally of President Karzai, was one of the 40 people who died. However, contrary to first reports, the bride and groom survived: they were in a neighbouring village.

Survivors picked their way through the rubble yesterday, pointing out shrapnel, bloodstains and barely recognisable human remains. Forty pairs of shoes, one for each of the dead, were piled up at the front door of the groom’s family home.

“My heart is burning in anger,” Mr Malik said. “The Americans should be put on trial.” He denied that there were any al-Qaeda or Taleban fugitives in the village, as the visiting American soldiers had suggested. Reporters who visited the scene shortly after the attack found no evidence of any military presence.

OK, I know you have experience in the military, so let me put it this way. When we bomb things, we have people on the ground with laser designators and things like this, observing and marking targets. This area was marked by special ops soldiers, busting their ass behind enemy lines and risking their lives. I believe what they say, not what the FUCKING ENEMY SAYS!!!!! you are so fucked you believe the enemy propaganda before yyou believe outr own soldiers!!!
If it walks like a liberal, talks like a liberal, its a liberal.

who is the fucking enemy? a bunch of people holding a wedding? explain to me how they are threat to you and me? has it ever occured to you that these warlords we got into bed with only need tell our military men "those people are taliban or al-quaida" and off the bombs go? not that that's what happened in this case. they're using american bombs to settle local disputes. I wasnt saying the military men weren't doing their jobs.

"I believe what they say, not what the FUCKING ENEMY SAYS!!!!! you are so fucked you believe the enemy propaganda before yyou believe outr own soldiers!!!"

so let me get this straight. afghanis who follow the traditional afghani wedding ritual of firing celebratory gunshots into the air are our 'enemies' and it is no consequence that our worldclass military machine mistakes that as antiaircraft fire? so by your twisted logic, any afghan that follows local custom, no matter how stupid or nonsensical it seems to us( i read your post about the goatcarcass game) is the 'ENEMY'? and you call me racist.

"I believe what they say, not what the FUCKING ENEMY SAYS!!!!!"

In that case, who do you believe in the controversy stemming from the israelis bombing the u.s.s. liberty, resulting in the deaths of 34 american navy crewmen? who do you believe, the american survivers who claimed they flew the u.s. flag, were observed for several hours by israeli aircraft who presumably were in communication with Mossad (for its size the best intelligence agency in the world), and were fired upon and attacked for 75 minutes? or the israeli pr spokesmen, who said the ship flew no flag, this multi-million $ piece of american technological prowess was mistaken for a 40 yr old egyptian frieghter, and the attack lasted for 12 minutes, not 75? who would you back up? our servicemen or a lackey for the israeli prime minister?

If you don't back up the crewmen, you're a disgrace and a hypocrite. But what can one expect from the neo-con christian coalition movement in this country? nevermind that the israelis kill our military personnel, spy on us, bug the white house's phones, infiltrate u.s. govt agency buildings and make blueprints, observe the sept. 11 hijackers for months and don't bother to tell us that these guys might be up to something. yeah, let's believe them, but afghans having a wedding are the "ENEMY' and are not to be believed at all. My point in posting that was not that we are killing innocent people intentionally, but that our presence there is doing nothing to stop terrorism and is just making things worse for the people who have the misfortune who live there. pull your head out of your ass

Is this the "ENEMY"?

"Around 500 people had gathered in Deh Rawud for the wedding party - both fathers were important men in the local Pashtun community, related to the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai."

Are friends of Mr. Karzai the "ENEMY"? I thought Mr. Karzai and his associates were on our side. Oh wait. Brown skin = enemy. My bad.

Is this the "ENEMY'?

Siddaqa Bibi, 14, said she was counting the people at the party to make sure everyone had a place to sleep when the attack began. "There was blood everywhere," she said. "Then all of a sudden the walls and roofs caved in and we were buried under the debris."

"I saw bodies flying like straws," said Haleema, an old woman. "I had to jump over six bodies to escape."

Eighteen-year-old Chinara was sitting with her girlfriends listening to songs on a tape recorder, happy that her sister had been about to marry the son of a local tribal chief.
Suddenly she heard a roar of planes, followed by a massive explosion. "I don't know what happened next," she said. "I woke in the hospital."

Wait a second. I thought the Taliban and al-Quaida had no use for women. Is a 14 yr old girl the ENEMY? In your twisted world, I guess she is.

Here is the official U.S. explanation:

The US military says one of its ground patrols in the area called in air support because it felt threatened by automatic gunfire.


Ma'amoor Abdul Qayyum saw his son, 11, die when "something came flying and hit him". His other son, who was sleeping on the roof, survived.

"The Americans have destroyed us," he said. "We have neither seen al-Qaida people nor Taliban but they bombed us. What did we do wrong?"

Is Mr. Qayyum, an associate of Mr. Karzai's friends, the ENEMY? What about his 11 yr old son?

"With many US newspapers carrying pictures of the wounded children, the White House and Pentagon have stepped up their exercise in damage limitation.

While the initial official response questioned whether there had been any civilian casualties and suggested that the airstrikes had been in reaction to enemy fire, the latest statements have been ones of condolence and a desire to investigate."

Even your war-mongering heroes, such as Messrs. Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld have admitted there was no al-aqaida or taliban, just an american pilot that obviously forgot all anti-aircraft capability was wiped out back in the fall. Oh wait? Did I just say that? Did I criticize an American soldier for making a mistake? That must mean I'm a commie dopesmoking stars and stripes burning 'liberal' that hates the military and doesnt appreciate the extraordinary sacrificies that have been made by veterans. I better not tell my grandfather who was at Normandy or my other grandfather that fought Germans in the Alps. To simply acknowledge that an american serviceman made a mistake and isn't perfect, with tragic consequences, is to spit in the faces of my grandfathers and my uncle (Vietnam). What's next? I guess you'll tell me I should move to Cuba or China or Amsterdam. And you say I'm predictable. Anything other evil you want to accuse me of? To simply acknowledge that this is a morally ambiguous world we live in and sometimes the U.S., like every other country in the world does less than admirable things, well that must mean i hate this country and can't recognize the evils in other societies such as China, North Korea, Russia, much of the Middle East, so on and so forth.

Ok, you got an answer for everything dont you? If you want to get into every international incident in history go ahead, I am talking about what happend just recently. You are pretty guillible, you believe every sob story there is that attacks america. Have you any experience in the military at all? You have no idea of the kindf of men fly these planes and fight on the ground do you? They are not blood thirsty murderers, they are soldiers, and soldiers have a code of honor. I know honor is a foreign word to you but it does exist. If they did bomb civilians at a wedding, which, COUGH COUGH, I doubt, it was a tragic accident, end of story. Dont forget these same men eliminated the taliban rule and liberated the Afghans, how do you think they were allowed to have music at the wedding? War is hell my friend, but you will never know that, you only know what you read, you have no personal experience. And yes, before you sasy I dont either, I was in the 10th mountain Div as a light infantryman, 2nd brigade, 3rd batallion 14 th infantry regiment. We went to Somalia in 92/93 and Haiti in 94. So I know how it is in combat and know the quality of the men who fight our countrys battles and do all the dirty you and your friends dont who want to do it. We allowed you to stay home and flap your gums about how crappy our foreign our policy was while we slept in the rain and dodged bullets to allow you to do that.

I didnt realize I had to be a veteran to criticize U.S. foreign policy. And I never said anything about soldiers not being brave or courageous. German infantrymen in WW2 exhibited individual acts of courage and bravery, but that doesnt mean the cause they were fighting for was worthy. Stepping into a combat zone takes intestinal fortitude and courage, but that doesnt mean the generals and policymakers have admirable goals. I happen to think that what we are doing in Afghanistan has very little to do with stopping 'terrorism', you and I agree to disagree on this one. But I never said that the men in the trenches are cowards. Dont put words in my mouth.

...I mean come on....everytime they take action NO armed male guerilla targets ever get killed. They seem to only manage to kill women and children and old decrept people. And when our planes bomb a target it is always a wedding ceremony or an infants milk factory NOT the chemical weapons manufacturing facility that it was reputed to be.
Fuck all liberals!

I have never been more ashamed of my country than I was when I saw how the government reacted to 9/11. Yes, that was a horrific tragedy. But I'm sure there are ways to handle it other than opening fire on a wedding. We've also killed Canadians in this "war on terror". Granted, those were, as the government said, mistakes. Mistakes of this magnitude should never ever happen.

i feel that the US has grossly overreacted to 9/11. i agree with you two, but i feel also that you have missed something.

the news never tells us when taliban members are killed. they never anounce success. they only tell us when the weddings are shot up.