KABUL, Jan 27: Troops of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) are starting to pour into Afghanistan, with a record 19 flights arriving on Saturday and more expected later on Sunday, an official said.
More than half the total expected deployment of 4,500 soldiers from 17 countries are already on Afghan soil with the remainder due by mid-February, British military spokesman Graham Dunlop said.
“As long as the airport remains open and the weather is good, we can maintain this level of incoming flights,” Dunlop said on Sunday.
Many planes are carrying supplies only, with 210 tonnes arriving on Saturday alone.
Dunlop could not say how many troops were expected to arrive over the weekend. “They are arriving all the time,” he said.
Since Kabul International Airport was reopened on Jan 16 the number of ISAF troops in Afghanistan has increased dramatically.
When the deployment began just before the inauguration of the new interim administration on December 22, all flights had to use the former Soviet air base at Bagram, about 50 kilometres north of the capital.
Due to the poor facilities at the airport and the wretched state of the road linking it to the capital, only five or six flights a day could be accommodated.
On the streets of the capital, ISAF troops are conducting more patrols, surrounded by crowds of welcoming Afghans.
WRONG PEOPLE KILLED: Afghans have challenged US accounts of a firefight, claiming US Special Forces soldiers killed the wrong people — sheltering in a school — during a raid in which the Pentagon said a Taliban weapons cache was destroyed and about 15 people killed.
Elsewhere, the top commander of the war in Afghanistan, Gen Tommy Franks, defended US tactics, saying that deploying large numbers of American ground forces would not have increased chances of capturing Osama bin Laden or Taliban leader Mulla Mohammed Omar.
The conduct of the ongoing military operations is expected to be discussed when Afghanistan’s interim leader, Hamid Karzai, visits the United States this week.
US commandos working with anti-Taliban Afghans have been combing rugged countryside and deep mountain caves searching for people loyal to Osama.
In one such operation, the Pentagon said US Army Special Forces raided two Taliban compounds at Hazar Qadam, about 100km north of Kandahar, killing about 15 people, capturing 27 and destroying a large number of weapons. One American soldier was wounded in the ankle.
However, villagers in Uruzgan province, where the raid took place, claimed Saturday that the victims were neither Taliban nor Al-Qaida fighters but Afghans sent by a pro-government official to negotiate the surrender of weapons from Taliban holdouts in the area.
The party of 18 men, led by Haji Sana Gul, convinced the Taliban to hand over the weapons, according to Bari Gul, his brother. Rather than leave the area at night, Haji Sana Gul’s party spent the night in a local madrassa with dozens of other people, the brother added.
However, US troops swept down before dawn Thursday and killed several people in the madrassa, including Haji Sana Gul, the brother said. Two of the dead were found with their hands tied behind their backs, he said. Three more people were killed at a district building 2 kilometres away.
Bari Gul speculated that someone misled the Americans, falsely claiming he and his men were Al-Qaida or Taliban. Afghans have in the past accused local leaders of misleading United States troops so they would kill their rivals.
In Washington, Pentagon spokesman Maj Mike Halbig said Saturday that
the events described by the Afghans “don’t fit with any of the information we have.” Special Forces troops are extensively trained to make sure they raid the correct targets, he said.
—Agencies
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