KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, July 2 — An American air assault in Oruzgan province early Monday, which local officials said left 40 civilians dead and at least 100 wounded, today drew the Afghan government's strongest criticism to date of U.S. military operations here.
Saying "stronger measures" and "further explanations" were needed to prevent the U.S.-led effort to hunt down al Qaeda and Taliban fugives from killing civilians, Foreign Minister Abdullah said: "This situation has to come to an end. Mistakes can take place ... but our people should be assured every measure has been taken to avoid such incidents."
With details of the incident still in dispute, Afghan and U.S. officials traveled to the isolated site, near Deh Rawud village about 100 miles north of Kandahar, to conduct an investigation.
Some local officials and survivors said U.S. warplanes had fired on a village for more than two hours after mistaking traditional celebratory gunfire at a rural wedding for groundfire aimed at a U.S. reconnaissance operation.
American officials in Washington and at Bagram air base near Kabul, however, said the U.S. forces had come under "sustained" groundfire that was not consistent with a wedding celebration and that air strikes had been called in by a U.S. ground patrol.
Col. Roger King, a U.S. military spokesman at Bagram, said the plane crews "felt the weapons were tracking them and making a sustained effort the engage them." He said the planes met "sustained, hostile fire" that was unlike the "random, sprayed" shooting that is a tradition in rural weddings here.
King expressed "deepest sympathies" for the victims and said four injured people had been treated at the scene by U.S. forces.
The incident occurred in a remote area where U.S. forces have been searching intensely for remnants of Taliban and al Qaeda forces and where some Afghan officials said they believe Mohammed Omar, the Taliban's leader, may still be in hiding. Taliban forces were driven from power late last year by a U.S.-led military campaign, and there have been no substantiated sightings of Omar since early December.
Initial accounts said the victims had been killed by bombing, and Pentagon officials said one of seven 2,000-pound bombs dropped on the area by B-52 planes had gone astray. But U.S. officials later said they believed some victims had been killed by cannon fire from an AC-130 gunship.
At least 18 victims, mostly women and children, were brought for treatment to a hospital in Kandahar, about 100 miles southeast of the attack site. They said an entire family of 25 people had been killed in one village where a wedding was taking place. One wounded girl whose parents died in the attack was brought to the hospital wearing a party dress.
"In one village there was a wedding party. In a whole family of 25 people, no single person was left alive," Abdullah, the foreign minister, said in Kabul.
Abdul Qayyum, one of the survivors, told hospital workers that U.S. forces had come to the area after the air strike and "demanded to know who had fired" at them, according to news services. He said they tried to tie his hands, but refrained after other villagers protested that he was an old man.
Monday's attack was the second reported episode of unintended civilian deaths during a U.S. military assault in Oruzgan province. On Jan. 23, U.S. Special Forces stormed another the village Hazar Qadam, where they believed al Qaeda fighters were hiding. Twenty-one Afghans were killed in the attack and more taken prisoner, but American officials later released the captives and acknowledged that none of the dead or captured had been Taliban or al Qaeda members.
Afghan officials warned villagers to desist from the firing guns at weddings while U.S. military operations against Taliban and al Qaeda forces are still being carried out. Such practices have already been stopped in other areas of Afghanistan.
"We ask the people not to fire guns while celebrating weddings in order to avoid misunderstandings and unpleasant incidents in the future," Karzai said after meeting with Gen. Dan McNeill, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, who met with Karzai to express his concern about the deaths.
"The Americans control the Afghan skies, and even a slight mistake by an Afghan on the ground can attract the unwanted attention of a U.S. warplane prowling the area," Rahimullah Yusufzai, an Afghan analyst, wrote today in a Pakistani newspaper, the News.
Yusufzai noted that most people living in that part of Oruzgan are from the same ethnic Pashtun tribe as Karzai and had sheltered him when he secretly entered Afghanistan last fall to build tribal opposition to the Taliban.
On the other hand, the area is also believed to be one of the last remaining strongholds of support for the Taliban, and U.S. forces have been intensively patroling the area for some time.
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