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Afghan Tribal Leader Warns of War on Karzai Over U.S. Raids
KABUL, Dec. 23 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - In a sign of tension that could still destabilize the new U.N.-backed Afghan regime, a tribal leader Sunday threatened revolt over the U.S. bombing which killed 65 Afghan tribal elders and chiefs traveling to Karzai's inauguration, news agencies reported.
"If the U.S. launches similar tyrannical attacks again, we will launch an armed struggle against Hamid Karzai's government," Gulba Din said, according to the pro-Taliban Afghan Islamic Press (AIP).
Din said the attack was launched after the head of the city of Khost, Bacha Khan, gave U.S. forces false information about the convoy. Din added that 14 civilian homes were also destroyed in the U.S. air strike, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
"Bacha Khan is giving wrong information to the Americans," he said. "If he does it again, we will wage an armed struggle against him also."
The tribal leader said there were no Taliban or al-Qaeda fighters in the convoy. AIP quoted a wounded Afghan, Mazali, as saying that seven members of his family were killed in the U.S. bombing.
At least 14 houses in his village of Pakhari were razed in the U.S. attacks in which women and children also died, Din said. "We will start a jihad [struggle] against Karzai if U.S. jets repeated such attacks," he added.
Pentagon officials had announced that AC-130 gun-ships and Navy jet fighters had knocked out about a dozen vehicles and the "compound" from which they had emerged, killing an unspecified number of people they described as members of the enemy "leadership", the British daily newspaper,
The Independent, reported Saturday.
But local tribal leaders said the victims were supporters of Karzai, and the air strike was based on incorrect information passed on by local informers.
"Several Afghan elders, tribal chiefs and commanders were among the victims of the killings," an AIP report quoted Sayed Yaqeen, an official of the local Paktia tribal council, as saying.
U.S. officials defended the raids, saying they were allegedly aimed at a convoy of senior members of the al-Qaeda or Taliban militias, but the head of the Zadran tribe in Paktia province told a Pakistan-based news agency only civilians were killed.
General Tommy Franks, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, said Saturday that U.S. warplanes had chosen the correct target and were allegedly fired upon from the convoy.
Franks denied that the convoy was transporting delegates to Saturday's inauguration ceremony. He claimed the vehicles were tracked for a long time before U.S. AC-130 gun ships and Navy jet fighters attacked them.
"Right now we have people on the ground investigating, but we are convinced it was a good target," he insisted, according to AFP.
"Friendly forces don't fire surface-to-air missiles at you," Franks said in Kabul just before the inauguration of the interim government. "The fact that two missiles were fired at our aircraft showed they were hostile forces and not innocent civilians," said Franks.
"There were a lot of people killed and a lot of vehicles damaged or destroyed," U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told a news conference in Washington, BBC's online news service reported.
Rumsfeld said significant numbers of coalition troops were being sent into the Tora Bora cave complex as the search for Osama bin Laden continues.
"Whatever is needed will be sent," he said, defending the air strikes. "And it won't just be the U.S. - it will be coalition forces."
The U.S. has also announced plans to send a new "thermobaric" bomb to Afghanistan that uses a delayed, high-pressure explosion to suck the air out of caves and tunnels.
Karzai said Saturday that he was in discussions with the U.S. about the incident, but he was clearly irritated at the distraction from the work of his new 29-member cabinet and power-sharing government.
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