PARIS, Dec 6: More than 80 civilians have been killed and 50 wounded since US warplanes started bombing the eastern Tora Bora region of Afghanistan, the Paris-based Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF, or Doctors Without Borders) group said on Wednesday.
“Since the start of the US bombing of Tora Bora on Dec 1, MSF teams have transported more than 80 dead and 50 wounded civilians to the hospitals of Koghiani and Jalalabad,” the group said in a statement.
It said the figures did not take into account all the victims of the raids.
MSF, which has won a Nobel peace prize for its work in the world’s trouble-spots, said it had “growing concerns over the fate of civilians in this war.”
It also said that events such as the massacre at the Qilai-Jangi prison by US airstrikes and alliance forces “raise, in terms of international human rights, questions as to the proportionality of a military response and its consequences on civilians”.
MSF urged all parties in the conflict to respect the Geneva Convention, “especially the coalition headed by the Americans, who say they are acting in the name of civilization and out of respect of humanitarian values”.
BACKING FOR ANTI-TALIBAN FORCES: US warplanes are backing anti-Taliban forces in a move on a complex of caves in eastern Afghanistan where Osama bin Laden is thought to be holed up, US military leaders said on Thursday.
General Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said anti-Taliban troops were helping to direct US bombing raids onto the complex at Tora Bora.
“We have begun to provide support to the opposition groups that are moving through the (Tora Bora) valley towards the complex,” Pace said at a Pentagon briefing.
“We have been attacking the caves from the air. Now that opposition groups are moving their troops to the complex, we are able to provide air support that they are helping to direct because they are able to see the caves that are active or not.”
The US military suspects Osama and his loyalists are holed up in the caves, but admit they have no way of knowing for certain the exact location of the Saudi-born multimillionaire.
“I receive every day dozens and dozens of intelligence pieces of information and, looking at them, one can tell they don’t agree. One can’t know with precision (where Osama is) until the chase in the area is over,” Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said while talking to reporters.—AFP
