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Red Cross Warehouse Destroyed in U.S. Attack
KABUL, Oct 16 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A warehouse run by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was destroyed Tuesday in a U.S. air raid on the Afghan capital Kabul, seriously injuring an Afghan staff member, an ICRC official said in news agency reports.
"I can confirm that a warehouse was hit at 1:30pm (4 a.m. EST) this afternoon and one person has been injured, one of the local staff," ICRC head of delegation for Afghanistan Robert Monin told Agence France-Presse (AFP) in neighboring Pakistan.
"There is no question about the ICRC's activities ... Military targets should be hit but civilian targets should not be hit."
Monin said the warehouse, in a northern part of Kabul, was full of relief goods such as blankets, shelter materials and possibly food, but he could not give details on the quantities.
"It was on fire, but from our information it is under control now," he said.
An official complaint had been lodged with the U.S. embassy in Pakistan and through the ICRC headquarters in Geneva, he said.
"They are taking note," Monin said, referring to the response from the United States.
ICRC spokeswoman Macarena Aguilar Rodriguez said in Geneva the warehouse was marked with the ICRC's Red Cross emblem.
"It was not a legitimate target, that's clear," she said.
U.S.-led forces have been bombing Afghanistan's ruling Taliban militia for its refusal to hand over Osama bin Laden, the Saudi dissident blamed for the September 11th attacks on New York and Washington.
The ICRC's expatriate staff, along with foreigners working with the U.N. and independent international aid groups, pulled out of Afghanistan citing security concerns following the attacks on the United States.
But the agency's operations, focusing on medical treatment for people affected by the civil war between the Taliban and opposition forces, had continued through the work of local staff.
The ICRC warehouse is the second aid facility to be destroyed since the bombings began on October 7th.
A demining agency's office linked to the United Nations was destroyed by a U.S. cruise missile last week, killing four Afghan guards.
The Taliban claims more than 400 civilians have died in the bombing - including more than 200 at a rural village near the eastern city of Jalalabad.
Washington has admitted hitting the demining agency, as well as a residential area near Kabul's airport, where four civilians reportedly died.
But the Pentagon insists it is only targeting Taliban military facilities and U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has dismissed the Taliban civilian casualty claims as "ridiculous" and dismissed claims that more than 200 people had died last week in the eastern village of Kadam.
Rumsfeld said tunneled-out caves stuffed with munitions had been destroyed in the village, sparking massive secondary explosions which may have damaged nearby villages.
But foreign journalists who were taken to Kadam over the weekend said they could see at least one crater amid the devastation.
Aid groups struggling to assist millions of Afghans in need of foreign aid are now caught between the U.S. attacks and an increasingly hostile Taliban, who have shut down the U.N.'s communications in the country and taken over several aid offices.
A U.N. spokeswoman on Tuesday said armed Arabs - men who have volunteered to fight with the Taliban or bin Laden - broke into aid agency offices and clashed violently with Taliban police in southern Afghanistan over the weekend.
"The law and order situation in Kandahar appears to be breaking down," U.N. spokeswoman Stephanie Bunker told reporters in Islamabad, referring to the Taliban's southern stronghold.
The destruction of the Red Cross's warehouse is also fuelling concerns over the accuracy of the "targeted" military campaign in Afghanistan and its impact on the civilian population.
The destruction of the facility came as the U.S.-led offensive took a new turn with special forces gunships zeroing in on Taliban militia fighters in the first low-level aerial attacks of the nine-day campaign.
The White House would not immediately confirm the bombing of the ICRC storage unit, saying it might have been hit by falling anti-aircraft ordinance.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer also ruled out any pause in the aerial campaign, despite a reported appeal from the Taliban for a let up.
"The president is not pursuing such a course because he does not think that it would be constructive," Fleischer told reporters.
Residents in the southern Taliban stronghold of Kandahar said intense U.S. raids continued throughout the day with planes buzzing overhead and repeated explosions around the southern city.
Targets inside the capital Kabul were hit in the early afternoon and late evening.
The daytime raids followed all-night attacks involving at least two AC-130 gunships - a heavily armored plane with formidable cannon firepower and a helicopter-like ability to move slowly over battlegrounds.
US defense officials said the planes, which can circle around a target using infrared sensors and radar to direct a precise deluge of cannon fire, were used against a Taliban troop complex in Kandahar.
Experts said deployment of the AC-130s could also indicate that U.S. forces were preparing to send ground troops to hunt bin Laden.
The head of the Taliban's information agency, Abdul Hanan Hemat, said the Kandahar raids left 33 civilians dead, five after a medical clinic was bombed.
In Kabul, at least seven loud explosions were heard early Tuesday, one causing a huge plume of black smoke in the north of the city where a military compound is believed to be located.
Kabul's beleaguered population had woken to find their electricity cut off after bombs struck the main power station, but by late afternoon it had been restored.
The anti-Taliban Northern Alliance has offered to cooperate with the U.S. air attacks, but its ground forces, just 50 kilometers (30 miles) north of Kabul, have remained idle.
Sporadic fighting continued Tuesday near the airport outside the strategic northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, south of the border with Uzbekistan.
"We are near Mazar-i-Sharif airport. We expect to take the city within the next day or two, but we will do it gradually," opposition commander Mohammad Atta said by satellite telephone from the frontline.
"Once Mazar is captured, the other provinces of the north - Balkh, Samangan, Faryab and lastly Kunduz - with fall very quickly in the coming weeks," he added.
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell met Tuesday with Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf in an effort to consolidate Islamabad's support for the campaign.
After their talks, Musharraf reiterated Islamabad's backing for military action, saying "we will certainly carry on cooperating as long as the operation lasts."
But he told a press conference that Pakistan believed the campaign should be "short and targeted."
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