KABUL, July 2: Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah on Tuesday deplored as unjustifiable the US bombardment on Sunday of a wedding party in a remote village, which killed 40 people.

“It is understandable that there are possible civilian casualties in military operations, but an incident with such magnitude and such casualties under such conditions is by no means justifiable,” Abdullah said at a press conference here.

His blunt criticism comes as Afghan and US officials, at odds over what led to Sunday night’s strike on a village in Dehrawad district, in central Uruzgan province, conduct a joint investigation into the botched raid.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has asked US forces to take “every necessary measure” to avoid further civilian deaths, the minister said.

Karzai urged the United States “to fully stop the repetition of such awkward incidents, and ensure that military operations aimed at finding terrorists do not harm civilians”.

“It has been a tragic event, a very tragic event, a very regrettable event,” Abdullah said, calling for “strong measures” to avoid further civilian deaths.

Uruzgan officials said the bomb hit “a wedding party in which some people were firing in jubilation and the Americans misunderstood and bombarded the place”.

The United States has rejected such accounts, insisting their planes had come under heavy direct attack.

Abdullah said a total of four villages in Dehrawad district were pounded for 15 minutes with bombs and shells.

He confirmed officials’ earlier tolls of 40 dead, saying the victims included 25 members of a single family at the wedding party of 200.

Abdullah warned that more civilian casualties would give Al Qaeda and Taliban remnants at large in Afghanistan more ammunition to stir the population against the US presence.

He said the Americans had told Karzai they were acting on a report that Al Qaeda and Taliban members were in the region and that anti-aircraft fire emanating from the location had threatened the US planes.

But he rejected the US explanations as insufficient, demanding a full inquiry as to whether bad intelligence, mistargeting or pilot error was at fault.

“What is needed is a full review of the operational procedures starting from the intelligence gathering to the conduct itself.”

Abdullah said US forces should coordinate their operations with Afghan defence ministry officials to prevent future civilian losses.

The chief US military spokesman in Afghanistan, Lt Col Roger King, said the Afghan reports “didn’t match our conflicting reports”.

“I don’t know what was going on in this village, except there were people shooting at coalition forces with heavy calibre machineguns and they returned fire,” King said. “Weapons were tracking them,” he said.

King said hostile forces were in the area, believed to be a stronghold of forces loyal to the Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.

US defence officials said on Monday that a bomb dropped by a B-52 bomber had gone astray, but on Tuesday they said the errant 900-kilo bomb did not hit a village, according to a ground observer who watched it hit an unpopulated area.

However, they are not ruling out the possibility the village was hit by fire from a US AC-130 craft, which was also in action on Sunday night, or by anti-aircraft artillery fire.

The stray bomb was one of seven satellite-guided bombs dropped in a strike on cave and bunker complexes in Uruzgan, US military officials said.

An Afghan official said a number of US B-52s and C-130s had been prowling around the Uruzgan capital of Tirin Kot, 30kms east of Dehrawad, where US special forces have based operations to hunt down Taliban chief Mullah Omar.

The official, Raz Mohammad, said US and local Afghan forces from Kandahar had been jointly tracking down the elusive Taliban leader.

Omar, who has eluded the Americans during their military campaign in Afghanistan, was believed to be hiding in mountains in Uruzgan.

“There are forces from Kandahar with the Americans following Mullah Omar,” he said. “We believe he is somewhere in this region.”

The Afghan Islamic Press said nine days ago that US-led coalition troops had launched a massive operation in Uruzgan and neighbouring provinces to hunt down the Taliban supremo.

Hundreds of troops had been airlifted into the area and were combing mountains and caves in Ghor, Helmand and Uruzgan provinces after reports that Omar and top associates were hiding there, the agency said.

The Taliban’s defence minister, Mullah Obaidullah, and senior Taliban commander Mullah Akhund were said to have also taken refuge there.

The United Nations expressed “great sadness” over the civilian deaths and said it was awaiting the outcome of the investigation.

MOURNING: Villagers in Dehrawad began mourning the dead.

“There are preparations for the official mourning of the martyrs in Dehrawad according to the people’s religious beliefs,” an Uruzgan official said.—AFP