LONDON, July 29: A draft UN report about Afghan wedding party killings has revealed “there was clear evidence that human rights violations had taken place and that coalition forces had arrived on the scene very quickly after the air strikes and ‘cleaned the area’, removing evidence of “shrapnel, bullets and traces of blood”.
“Women on the scene had their hands tied behind their backs by the US forces.”
Parts of the UN report were published in a leading British newspaper on Monday and the paper says it has seen the report in Kabul.
In an exclusive report The Times says a preliminary UN investigation has found no corroboration of American claims that its aircraft were fired on from the ground, and says there were discrepancies in US accounts of what happened.
“If the findings are upheld by a second, more detailed, UN investigation, they will cause huge embarrassment to the Pentagon.”
The paper, quoting UN sources, said the findings pointed to an American cover-up, and suggested that American investigators were dragging their feet hoping that the issue would pass.
The attack took place early on July 1 as American forces were looking for Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters. “Investigators had found no weapons, no corroboration” on the ground that the US soldiers had been fired on, and that there were discrepancies between the various American accounts of what happened.”
In a prepared statement a UN spokesman in Afghanistan said on Sunday night that the report contained judgments that were not sufficiently substantiated, and that a comprehensive report was being finalized that would provide a more detailed and accurate picture.
However, the statement added, “the findings on the ground bear out the paramount necessity that such incidents do not recur, both from a humanitarian and political perspective”.
Agencies add: In a move to consolidate his shaky power over Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai has nominated four new provincial governors, official sources said on Monday.
The new governors include members of factions that resisted 10 years of occupation of Afghanistan by the former Soviet Union in the 1980s but which fought each other for control of the country in the 1990s.
The most prominent is Moonshi Abdul Majid, the new governor of Logar, south of Kabul. He was an interior minister in the government of former President Burhanuddin Rabbani in the mid-1990s, before the hardline Islamist Taliban took over.
The new governors replaced members of the Northern Alliance-dominated Karzai government who took the positions without central approval during a power vacuum that followed the fall of the Taliban last year, Karzai’s spokesman, Sayed Fazl Akbar, said.
“The new appointments have been made after some consultations with the people of the areas,” he said.
Sayed Mohammad Yusouf Shajan was named governor of the eastern province of Kunar, Ibrahim Babakar Khel of neighbouring Laghman, while engineer Mohammad Omar was appointed to the northern province of Baghlan.
Local analysts see the appointments as a move by Karzai to stretch his rule beyond Kabul, a city where where nearly five thousand international peacekeepers, along with police and security forces have brought stability, to regions where warlords vie for power.
The most serious threat to Karzai’s government from local warlords so far has been from Pad Shah Khan Zadran, who he appointed governor of the southeastern province of Paktia but replaced later amid local opposition.
In revenge, Zadran, who comes from a powerful Pashtun tribe, fired dozens of rockets at Gardez, the provincial capital, earlier this yea.
Since then he has occupied the governor’s office in neighbouring Khost province.