Children have become usual victims of the U.S. massive raids

KABUL, December 10 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – The U.S. military admitted Wednesday, December 10, that its forces in Afghanistan had killed eight people, including six children, during a fresh raid in eastern Afghanistan.

U.S. soldiers found the bodies Saturday, December 6, after aircraft and ground troops launched an attack Friday night against a compound east of Gardez town, allegedly in search for Taliban remnants.

"After we went there we discovered the bodies of two adults and six children under a collapsed wall," Lieutenant Colonel Bryan Hilferty was quoted by Agence France-Presse (AFP) as telling reporters at Bagram Air Base near Kabul.

The U.S. military admitted Sunday, December 7, killing nine children in an air attack a day earlier in neighboring Ghazni province.

The deaths of the children will likely add to the problems the United States has faced winning hearts and minds in the troubled area, ahead of elections due next year, Reuters said.

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, pressed during a Pentagon briefing on why the military continued "targeted killings" despite tragic errors, said Washington preferred to capture those it was hunting.

"We would be happy to capture them. We would be happy to have them surrender. And if they don't, we would be happy to kill them. And that's what's going on," he said.

In July last year, the Afghan government said 48 people had been killed and 117 hurt in Uruzgan province when a U.S. AC-130 gunship attacked a wedding party.

The U.S. military reported that 34 died and 50 were hurt, mostly women and children.

Several human rights watch-dogs slammed the U.S. raids in Afghanistan, charging that civilians are recklessly targeted.

Amnesty International condemned Wednesday, May 28, U.S. breaches of international law under the cover of the so-called war on terror, but Washington dismissed most of the criticism.

New Raid

In another development, hundreds of U.S. troops backed by helicopters launched Tuesday, December 9, a new air assault near Afghanistan’s southeastern border, the U.S. military spokesman said.

Soldiers from the first battalion 501st parachute infantry regiment, trained in the "tundra and the mountains of Alaska," raided a region in the frontier province of Khost, Hilferty told reporters.

Khost, bordering Pakistan's remote tribal regions where Taliban fighters have been allegedly re-grouping, has been the site of several attacks on U.S. troops.

The assault was part of the biggest U.S. "Operation Avalanche" against resurgent Taliban and their allies since Afghanistan’s former rulers were wiped out in a U.S.-led bombardment campaign two years ago.

Operation Avalanche has deployed around 2,000 U.S. troops backed by warplanes in southern and southeastern Afghanistan since early December.

Mounting clashes between U.S.-led forces and suspected Taliban fighters forced aid agencies to suspend or scale back operations across swathes of the south and southeast, hampering much-needed reconstruction and aid work.

Operation Avalanche is the latest in a series of major U.S. military operations this year against alleged Taliban fighters launching almost daily attacks on U.S. troops in the rugged provinces bordering Pakistan, AFP said.

Despite the operation, Zabul remains one of the most troubled provinces, with regular attacks on workers rebuilding the key Kabul-Kandahar highway.

Two Indian road workers were kidnapped at the weekend in the area, following the earlier abduction of a Turkish engineer who was released a week ago after being held captive for a month.

In northeast Afghanistan, some 1,000 U.S. troops backed by hundreds of Afghan soldiers last week ended a similar offensive, Operation Mountain Resolve, which was launched early November.