| QUETTA, PAKISTAN - October 29 - At least twenty-five, and
possibly as many as thirty-five, Afghan civilians died when U.S. bombs
and gunfire hit their village, Chowkar-Karez, on the night of October
22, Human Rights Watch said today.
None of the witnesses interviewed by Human Rights Watch knew of Taliban
or Al-Qaida positions in the area of the attack.
Human Rights Watch reiterated its call to the U.S.-led alliance to
ensure that it is taking adequate precautions to avoid civilian
casualties, and called for an immediate investigation into the bombing
raid that hit Chowkar-Karez, located some forty kilometers north of the
Taliban stronghold of Kandahar.
"If there were military targets in the area, we'd like to know what they
were," said Sidney Jones, Asia Director of Human Rights Watch. "This is
the second instance in less than a week in which we've documented
substantial civilian casualties from U.S. bombing raids. The Pentagon
has got to do more to avoid these deaths."
Human Rights Watch researchers located six wounded survivors of the
October 22 bombing raid that hit Chowkar-Karez. The six are currently
recovering in Quetta hospitals. Human Rights Watch also interviewed
several additional persons who witnessed the attack but were not hurt.
Among those wounded by the bombing are forty-year-old Sardar Bibi, who
lost her husband and six children in the attack; five-year-old Shabir
Ahmed, who received severe shrapnel wounds to his head and remains
unconscious; Shabir Ahmed's seven-year-old brother, who was also
wounded; and three adult sisters.
According to the highly consistent accounts of the survivors, the bombs
came from several aircraft that flew over the village of Chowkar-Karez,
which is located in the Buri-Kala area of Kandahar province, some forty
kilometers north of the city of Kandahar. The attack began at about 11
p.m. on the night of Monday, October 22, 2001. Many of the people in the
village then ran out of their homes, afraid that the bombs would fall on
the homes. All witnesses stated that aircraft then returned to the area
and began firing from guns. Many of the civilians were killed from the
firing. The bombing and firing lasted for about one hour.
One family interviewed by Human Rights Watch provided the names of
eighteen relatives killed in the incident, and another unrelated woman
told Human Rights Watch that her husband and six children were killed,
and that she had been told that as many as thirty-five people died in
the raid.
All of the witnesses interviewed by Human Rights Watch were adamant that
there were no Taliban or Al-Qaida positions in the area of the attack,
which is in a remote rural area of Afghanistan. In almost all other
cases of civilian casualties caused by the U.S.-led bombing campaign
investigated by Human Rights Watch, survivors and witnesses have been
forthcoming in identifying Taliban or Al-Qaida military positions
located nearby which could have been the target of the attack. It is
impossible for Human Rights Watch to verify independently whether
Taliban or Al-Qaida military targets existed in the area of
Chowkar-Karez village, but the consistent statements of all witnesses
and survivors that there were none is notable.
Mushfeqa, aged twenty, was interviewed by Human Rights Watch in a Quetta
hospital where she and two sisters were recovering from shrapnel wounds.
She explained that she and her extended family had fled from the city of
Kandahar to their rural homes in Chowkar-Karez when the U.S.-led bombing
campaign began. Referring to October 22, she told Human Rights Watch,
"It was at about 11 p.m. First, one plane came and dropped a bomb. We
ran out of the home, because we were afraid to die there. Then, some
went back inside. I was at the door, and some of the small children were
outside. Then the plane came and it was firing. I saw my mother and my
brother shot. My uncle ran to his car to turn off the lights. Then a
bomb hit the car and he died. ... When the next bomb came, I was inside
the room. I was injured from the shrapnel."
Belqais, aged forty, a relative of Mushfeqa, confirmed to Human Rights
Watch the deaths of her two brothers and many of their relatives. She
named among the dead her eldest brother Noor Ahmed, aged fifty, his wife
Masooma, aged thirty-five, and their four children, as well as her
second brother, Saleh Ahmed, aged thirty-five, his wife Zarmina, and one
of their sons. The two surviving sons of Saleh Ahmed, aged five and
seven, are currently hospitalized in Quetta and were visited by Human
Rights Watch. Belkais stated that other family members had also died.
Shafiqa, a sister of Mushfeqa who was also wounded in the attack, told
Human Rights Watch that in total nineteen members of the extended family
had died and provided a list of names which included the names provided
by Belqais and Mushfeqa as well as others.
Another unrelated victim of the attack, located independently by Human
Rights Watch, provided additional and confirming information of the
incident. Sardar Bibi, aged about forty, is currently recovering in
another hospital in Quetta. She told Human Rights Watch, "I was wounded
five days ago. It was at night, at about 11:30 or so, I don't know the
exact time as we were sleeping. Suddenly the bombardment started. We
went out of the house because we were afraid they would bombard the
house. Then, we were running with our neighbors. Another bomb fell down.
...The plane was circling and also shooting. First, a plane came and
dropped a bomb, but the other plane kept circling." Her husband, Daulat
Khan, and all of her six children were killed during the attack. Her
children included two one-and-one-half-year-old twins, Mohammed Yasin
and Mohammed Yusof, fourteen-year-old Akhter Bibi, fifteen-year-old
Najia, sixteen-year-old Maimana, and eighteen-year-old Mariam.
She confirmed that there had been many civilian casualties in the
village, and gave a similar death toll from one family as that given by
the family interviewed by Human Rights Watch (see above): "Many people
died and many were wounded. Eighteen people died from our neighborhood,
and seventeen others died who were relatives."
The incident in Chowkar-Karez village happened a day after twenty-three
civilians, the majority of them children, were killed when U.S. bombs
hit the remote Afghan village of Thori located near a Taliban military
base in Oruzgan province (see Human Rights Watch release, "Afghanistan:
U.S. Bombs Kill Twenty-three Civilians," October 26, 2001 at
http://www.hrw.org/press/2001/10/afghan1026.htm).
"We urge the Pentagon to investigate immediately what went wrong on
October 22 and to take all feasible steps to avoid repetition of such a
tragedy," said Jones.
###
|
