Qalaye Niazi village, north of Gardez, Paktia province

2001-12-29

52-107

Two B-1B bombers and one B-52 attacked the village of Qalaye Niazi, just north of Gardez in Paktia province. Local Afghans initially reported that over one hundred people were killed. Witness Janat Gul told Reuters that twenty-four members of his family died, leaving him the only survivor. The Reuters television crew described seeing at least twelve flattened houses and several large craters. One cameraman said "scraps of flesh, pools of blood and clumps of what appeared to be human hair" were visible among the rubble. The strike directly hit a five-house compound that housed ten families. Several guests had crammed into the three occupied houses for a wedding the morning of the attack - one of the reasons the death toll was so high. Haji Saifullah, head of the local tribal council, invited U.S. forces into the village to survey the damage. He claimed that 107 civilians had died, including women and children, and that Taliban had deserted the area six weeks prior to the incident. Staff at the Gardez hospital corroborated his figure. The United Nations received "an unconfirmed but reliable report" that suggested fifty-two civilians had perished in the bombing. U.N. spokeswoman Stephanie Bunker said there was no evidence of either Taliban or al-Qaeda presence in the village. Among the dead were ten women and twenty-five children. In spite of these reports, the U.S. maintained that it struck a legitimate target, saying that senior Taliban leadership was at the site and that two surface-to-air missiles were fired from the village. The bombs also set off secondary explosions, indicating they had hit stockpiled ammunition. Commander Matthew Klee, a spokesman for the U.S. central command said, "Follow-on reporting indicates that there was no collateral damage." Villagers say the stored ammunition had been left by the Taliban before they retreated from the area. Taj Mohammad, the village elder, notified authorities about the ammunitions, but no one came to collect it. Not knowing what else to do, they stored it. The U.S. has produced no evidence of surface-to-air missiles being fired. Saifullah believes the incident was the result of false intelligence supplied to the U.S. by rival tribes. He and many others blame Aghi Badshah Khan Zadran, the anti-Taliban commander of Khost province who wants to bring Paktia and Paktika under his control. Some tribal elders claim that he threatened to have U.S. planes bomb them if they did not agree. Zadran, also known as Pacha Khan Zadran, was accused of having the U.S. bomb a convoy of elders nine days earlier for similar reasons. David Holly, a BBC weapons expert, visited the village and carefully examined the five buildings that were hit. While two of the houses were ammunition dumps, he said, three were "clearly" houses. Because there was no indication of stray bombs, he concluded that the strike was probably the result of "poor intelligence."

eye witness accounts, drone / unmanned, leadership / assassination, US / NATO investigation, US / NATO statement, NATO led, cluster bomb(s), US / NATO civilian acknowledgment, local protest, in-flight decision, GPS / JDAM