July 4, 2002	Thursday	Rabi-us-Sani 22,1423

BAGRAM/KANDAHAR, July 3: An Afghan wedding party looked like a slaughter house after being attacked by US warplanes this week, survivors said on Wednesday.

“I saw bodies flying like straws,” said Haleema, an old woman brought to hospital in Kandahar. “I had to jump over six bodies to escape.”

US military investigators arrived in the remote village in central Afghanistan to determine what had happened. Accompanied by two Afghan ministers, several tribal elders and an embassy staffer, they spent two hours at the site.

Anger over the incident grew among Afghans, a factor which could complicate the task of the US military as it tracks down Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters.

The Afghan government says wedding guests near the village of Deh Rawud were firing into the air — a tradition at Pakhtoon weddings — when they were mistakenly bombed by US forces.

Locals said they had buried at least 30 people after the attack, but feared many more were still lying under the rubble.

“A piece of iron sliced the woman’s neck in front of me,” said Naseema, a 15-year-old girl, said at a Kandahar hospital where she had been brought for treatment.

“In a split second her head was not on her body.”

Another woman said: “It was like an abattoir. There was blood everywhere. There was smoke and dirt all around, and people were running helter skelter. It was a doomsday scene.”

ANGER RISING: The Afghan government called for more careful targeting by US forces, and closer coordination with local authorities, as anger rose among Afghans.

“The mistakes are too much,” said 18-year-old Fateh Shah in Kabul. “This is not acceptable and has to be stopped, otherwise the feelings of Afghans will be provoked against all foreigners, let alone the Americans.”

The incident could complicate the US military campaign in Afghanistan by alienating local people.

A three-vehicle convoy of US civil affairs and medical personnel was fired on as it returned from a hospital in the southern city of Kandahar on Tuesday evening, after visiting 19 wounded people brought there after the attack.

INVESTIGATORS SCEPTICAL: The US investigators, travelling in a 20-vehicle convoy, took five hours to cover the 60-km journey from the provincial capital of Tarin Kowt through twisting mountain roads.

“There should be more blood,” the American investigators repeatedly said as they toured the village, according to the Stars and Stripes report. “Where are the bodies?,” they asked, after only being shown parts of a skull and an ear.

Villagers took investigators to a building with a large hole in the roof which had suffered a direct hit. Inside, blood stains and a small pair of children’s sandals were visible.

Colonel Kass Saleh, the head of the American investigative team, scraped blood samples into bottles and took away shell casings which villagers said came from the planes.

Information about the incident on Sunday night and Monday morning has trickled out slowly from the US military, with partial and slightly contradictory accounts emerging from the Pentagon and Bagram air base, the coalition’s staging post for its operations in Afghanistan.

The US military has not accepted blame for what appeared to be the worst “friendly fire” incident of its campaign in Afghanistan and which occurred during a search in the area for Taliban chief Mullah Mohammad Omar.—Reuters