UN envoy urges US forces to be cautious in operations

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, December 08, 2003

UN envoy urges US forces to be cautious in operations

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The United Nations' special envoy in Kabul on Sunday urged the US forces to be cautious in their operations in Afghanistan after nine children were killed in a US air aid in a southern Aghan province.

Lakhdar Brahimi, special representative of UN Secretary-GeneralKofi Annan, "has been profoundly distressed at the news that nine children were killed Saturday in Ghazni as a result of coalition military action," UN spokesman Manoel de Almieda e silva told reporters here Sunday.

The US-led coalition forces announced earlier in the day that the air attack in Ghazni, about 130 kilometers southwest of here, targeted a "known terrorist" believed to be hiding in a village house there.

"Following the attack, ground coalition forces searching the area found the bodies of both the intended target and those of nine children nearby," said a statement issued from Bagram Airbase, the headquarters of the coalition, about 70 kilometers north of Kabul.

A US military spokesman said that the coalition regretted the loss of the children and an US military team had been sent to the site for an investigation.

Over 11,500 US-led coalition forces are currently in Afghanistan to hunt down guerrilla fighters of the Taliban and its extremist allies, often in mountainous border areas in southern and eastern provinces.

"The special representative on behalf of the UN Secretary-General expresses deeply-felt condolence to the families of the nine children," said UN spokesman Manoel de Almieda e silva.

"The protection of civilians is an obligation that must be observed by all, this incident which follows similar incident adds to a sense of insecurity and fear in the country," he added.

Dozens of Afghan civilians, mostly villagers in border areas, had been mistakenly killed in several air bombing attacks by US forces in their hunting for guerrilla fighters of the ousted Taliban militia and their al-Qaeda allies in southern and eastern Afghanistan since late 2001, when the Taliban regime was overthrown by a US-led campaign.

The UN spokesman said that the United Nations urged an inquiry on the incident by the US-led coalition to be swift and its results made public.

UN special representative Brahimi "hopes that lessons will be learned from this episode so that it is not repeated," said the spokesman.

Meanwhile, Brahimi condemned a series of attacks in Afghanistan by suspected Taliban fighters in the last few days, calling them "utterly condemnable criminal acts."

He was referring to an explosion on Saturday in a populated market in the southern Kandahar city, which left nearly 20 passers-by injured, and a Thursday highway attack on a convoy of the Afghan Central Statistics Office in a western province, which killed a driver and wounded 10 others.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai late Saturday condemned the Kandahar bomb attack, calling it "a cowardly act aimed at terrorizing the people of Afghanistan" as his transitional government is preparing to hold a constitutional Loya Jirga, or grand assembly, to ratify the country's new constitution.

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