KABUL, Oct 26: US bombs destroyed three Red Cross warehouses here on Friday, wiping out stocks of food and cooking oil intended for widows and disabled people.
An eyewitness said the two warehouses were totally destroyed and ablaze, with trucks upturned and sacks of humanitarian supplies such as wheat and peas scattered among the debris.
“I do not know how to explain my feelings. I’m very sorry about it especially when I look at this fire and I imagine the widows and disabled people who would have received this aid,” one Red Cross official at the scene said.
There were no immediate reports of casualties. Taliban soldiers were at the scene attempting to bring the blaze under control.
Friday’s attack is the second against International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) warehouses in Kabul since the airstrikes began on October 7.
An ICRC warehouse in the same area was hit in an accidental bombing on Oct 16 which the Pentagon later confirmed. One ICRC staff member was injured in that incident.
A huge cloud of black smoke rose over the area shortly after the bombs struck around 1pm (1.30pm PST). More explosions were heard at the same time near the Kabul airport around two kilometres to the east.
“We had intended to distribute more of our humanitarian aid tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. What was left we had intended to distribute among widows and the civilian victims of the recent attacks,” the ICRC official said.
A UN-backed demining agency’s office here was destroyed in a missile attack in the first days of the airstrikes, killing four civilian guards.
MASSIVE BOMBING: US jets swooped over Kabul in the early afternoon as huge explosions were heard north of the city near the airport and a militia headquarters, triggering a huge fire that sent up a column of black smoke.
Overnight at least 11 explosions had rocked the Afghan capital in three separate bombing runs, sending a signal that US forces will keep up the pressure despite controversy over the campaign’s mounting civilian death toll.
Witnesses said a US bomb that landed on the outskirts of the capital killed two young girls and destroyed three homes, one day after the United Nations said that a US cluster bomb had killed nine civilians.
FUTURE SETUP: The Northern Alliance’s envoy to Moscow, Abdul Assefi, reiterated Friday that the Taliban must be excluded from any future regime, but said that Pashtuns would be included in a broad-based coalition.
“The Taliban is not an ideology, it is a military school,” he said, “They have nothing in common with any specific ethnic group.”
Britain has mobilized 200 Royal Marines for a ground mission in Afghanistan, and 400 others are on high alert and ready to deploy from Britain, Armed Forces Minister Adam Ingram told parliament in London Friday.
The force of 200 men will remain in the Gulf on board the Royal Navy ship HMS Fearless when other British troops return from huge military exercises in Oman next week, Ingram said.
US Vice President Dick Cheney said late Thursday: “The air campaign has cleared the way for further operations.”—AFP
