U.S. air strike victims say Taliban long gone

HERAT, Afghanistan | Afghans who lost family members in a U.S. bombardment last week say Taliban militants fled hours before the U.S. attack — an account that contrasts with Pentagon claims about an incident that has come to encapsulate an uphill battle for Afghan hearts and minds.

Haji Sayed Barakat, who lost two children and his wife of 35 years in the May 4 attack, said Taliban militants were present in the area but had moved on two hours before the U.S. air strikes.

In a voice more confused than angry, the Afghan farmer gestured toward his three remaining daughters, now recovering in the sterile quarters of Herat hospital’s new burn ward.

“My girls, do they look like Taliban?” he asked.

Afghan officials say 140 people, including 95 children, died in the operation in the country’s western Farah province. The figures, if confirmed, would amount to the largest number of civilians killed in a single incident since U.S. forces helped oust a Taliban government in 2001.

The deaths sent public anger reverberating through the Kabul government at an especially fragile moment in the war, with a summer showdown with the resurgent Taliban looming.

In Farah city, a stone-throwing mob shouted, “Death to America,” before they were scattered by police gunfire this week. President Hamid Karzai and Afghan lawmakers have repeatedly called for an end to U.S. air strikes.

“How can you expect a people who keep losing their children to remain friendly?” Mr. Karzai said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” He called civilian casualties the “biggest concern of Afghanistan and a damage to the effort against terrorists.”

Two days later, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates replaced Gen. David McKiernan, commander of U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan, with former Green Beret Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, to bring “fresh thinking” to the counterinsurgency strategy.

According to U.N. figures, 2,118 civilians were killed in conflict-related violence last year, a jump of nearly 40 percent over 2007. Of that toll, pro-government forces were held responsible for 828 deaths, largely from errant air strikes and special operations raids.

Mr. Barakat said his wife and children had left their family home to visit his mother-in-law in Gerani, one of three villages that were bombed in Farah province’s Bala Boluk district on the night of May 4. He insisted that no Taliban militants were present when the U.S. explosives struck.

A U.S. military spokesman disputed the claim, saying the air strikes were called in after an Afghan national army soldier was injured in an engagement with the militants.

“The entire operation was in response to the Taliban attack. It was never an offensive engagement. The fight was in reaction,” said Chief Petty Officer Brian Naranjo.

U.S. military officials said the Taliban corralled residents into compounds on the front lines of a running battle with Afghan forces.

The officials conceded that a number of people were killed, but initially said the Taliban caused the deaths by exploding grenades among villagers and drawing an air strike to exploit anger in the aftermath. Later, U.S. officials said the Taliban forced villagers to pick up weapons and shoot first at police, then at arriving Afghan army reinforcements.

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