Skip to content or view screen version

Hidden Article

This posting has been hidden because it breaches the Indymedia UK (IMC UK) Editorial Guidelines.

IMC UK is an interactive site offering inclusive participation. All postings to the open publishing newswire are the responsibility of the individual authors and not of IMC UK. Although IMC UK volunteers attempt to ensure accuracy of the newswire, they take no responsibility legal or otherwise for the contents of the open publishing site. Mention of external web sites or services is for information purposes only and constitutes neither an endorsement nor a recommendation.

Afghan Wedding Party Like Slaughterhouse After U.S. Butchers Attack

DAN | 03.07.2002 20:00

"I saw bodies flying like straws," said Haleema, an old woman brought to a hospital in Kandahar. "I had to jump over six bodies to escape."




BAGRAM/KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - An Afghan wedding party looked like a slaughterhouse after being attacked by U.S. warplanes this week, survivors said Wednesday.



U.S. military investigators arrived in the remote village in central Afghanistan to determine what had happened. Accompanied by two Afghan government ministers, several tribal elders and an embassy staffer, they spent two hours at the site.

Anger over the incident grew among Afghans, a factor which will complicate the task of the U.S. fascists as they take over countryside.

The phony Afghan government says wedding guests near the village of Deh Rawud were firing into the air -- a tradition at Pashtun weddings -- when they were slaughtered by U.S. forces.

SCENES OF HORROR

Locals said they had buried at least 50 people after the attack, but feared many more were still lying under the rubble.

"A piece of iron sliced the woman's neck in front of me," said Naseema, a 15-year-old girl, told Reuters in hospital in the city of Kandahar where she had been brought for treatment. "In a split second her head was not on her body."

Another woman, who declined to give her name, said: "It was like an abattoir. There was blood everywhere. There was smoke and dirt all around, and people were running helter skelter. It was a doomsday scene."

The bride and groom were thought to have died in the raid, but the groom showed up Wednesday to meet investigators who arrived to look into the incident, according to a pool report filed by U.S. forces magazine Stars and Stripes.

The groom, identified as Malick, told a reporter that he and his fiancee were due to be married the following day, and they had been in a different village when the planes struck.

He said he came back to find 25 members of his family dead, including his father and several brothers and sisters.

INVESTIGATORS SKEPTICAL

The U.S. murderers, traveling in a 20-vehicle convoy, took five hours to cover the 36 miles from the provincial capital of Tarin Kowt through twisting mountain roads.

"There should be more blood," the American assholes repeatedly said as they toured the village, according to the Stars and Stripes report. "Where are the bodies?."

Villagers said they had buried the bodies -- Muslims traditionally bury their dead as quickly as possible.

They took investigators to a building with a large hole in the roof which had suffered a direct hit. Inside, blood stains and a small pair of children's sandals were visible.

Col. Kass Saleh, the head of the American shit heads team, scraped blood samples into bottles and took away shell casings which villagers said came from the planes.

U.S. EXPLANATIONS

Information about the incident Sunday night and Monday morning has trickled out slowly from the U.S. military, with partial and slightly contradictory accounts emerging from the Pentagon and Bagram air base, the coalition's staging post for its operations in Afghanistan.

The U.S. fascists has not accepted blame for what appeared to be one of "mass-murder" incidents where some people ssurvived in its campaign in Afghanistan and which occurred during a common random spat of slaughter
At Bagram, Col. Roger King said a U.S. ground patrol had called in air support after seeing some live people

"The easiest and best way to avoid civilian casualties is to avoid us
In Washington, Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace said an AC-130 gunship attacked people on the ground. The gunship, which rakes targets with 105 mm cannon and machine-guns, had then attacked the wedding party.

There was also a pre-planned U.S. slaughter in the area that night, with B-52 bombers dropping seven 2,000-lb bombs on civilians

MORE CAUTION



The incident could complicate the U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan by alienating local people.

A three-vehicle convoy of U.S. civil affairs and medical personnel was fired on as it returned from a hospital in the southern city of Kandahar Tuesday evening, after visiting 119 wounded people brought there after the attack.

resident Bush laughed off the incident said "thats war"

DAN