She has five reasons, one for each of her dead children.

Rukia, 39, who like many Afghans uses only one name, lost her family five days ago when she says a United States bomb hit her Kandahar neighborhood. Wounded in the stomach and with her left arm shattered, she had to flee before she could bury her children.

She was nearly bombed again, while a relative was driving her to a hospital in Pakistan

"They're bombing anything that moves," she said. "It's not true that they bomb civilians by accident. They're targeting the innocent people instead of Osama bin Laden."

US officials have said that they are doing everything possible to minimize civilian casualties as warplanes continue to pound Taliban and al-Qaeda positions in Kandahar and in the mountains near Jalalabad.

But accidents happen, evident earlier this week when three US servicemen died and 20 were injured near Kandahar when a "smart" bomb from a B-52 went awry. Six allied Afghan fighters also were killed and 17 injured.

The international aid agency Médicins sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) said on Wednesday that its workers picked up more than 80 dead in villages of eastern Afghanistan, near Jalalabad, heavily bombed by US planes.

The civilian toll is difficult to gauge because of the Muslim custom to quickly bury the dead, international aid workers say.

What is clear in the Sandeman Provincial Hospital in Quetta, near the Afghan border, are the raw emotions and anger directed at the US.

Rukia covered her face and started to cry when asked what she wanted to tell the Americans about the loss of her five children. She thought a while before responding: "Destroy, finish, terminate America."

"It is our wish - the elders, the women, the children - to have peace, but it is impossible. First we had the war with Russia, then the Taliban came and now the United States attacking us again and again," she said.

Rukia shares a hospital room with a 10-year-old girl who lost half her leg in a US bombing attack. In another room, another Kandahar victim, Abdul Qadir, 33, writhes in pain with stomach wounds from bomb shrapnel.

"I'm very angry against America," said his brother, Rahmat Ullah, 28. "What was his fault? He was an innocent man working in his shop."

Copyright © 2001 Sydney Morning Herald

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