United States warplanes have reportedly killed more than 100 people, including many women and children, in a devastating raid on a village in eastern Afghanistan, residents have said.
At least one fighter jet, a B-52 bomber and two helicopters swooped on the village of Qalaye Niazi, about four km north of the city of Gardez, capital of eastern Paktia province, villager Janat Gul told the Reuters press agency.
Paktia province is where US forces have been carrying out operations against remnants of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network and Taliban fighters still on the run.
"There are no al Qaeda or Taliban people here," said Gul, referring to the network blamed for the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, and the former Afghan government which sheltered it.
Gul said 24 members of his family were killed in the pre-dawn raid and described himself as the sole survivor.
"People are very upset about what is going on here," he said.
The province borders Pakistan and is southwest of the jagged canyons of Tora Bora - one of the last stands of al Qaeda fighters. It was heavily bombed in early December when bin Laden was believed to be hiding there.
In Qalaye Niazi, at least 12 houses were razed in the attack.
Amid the destruction, a Reuters Television cameraman saw scraps of flesh, pools of blood and clumps of what appeared to be human hair. Huge craters had been blasted out by the strike.
A member of the local tribal shura, or council, said they had invited US forces to the village to see the damage and to find out what had happened.
In the U.S., Major Pete Mitchell - a spokesman for U.S. Central Command - said: "We are aware of the incident and we are currently investigating."
Reuters passed several four-wheel drive vehicles containing US forces, accompanied by soldiers of the Northern Alliance which took Kabul in November, at the Tira Pass, apparently en route to the village. However, they refused to allow photographs or to speak to reporters.
"We have invited them to come to see for themselves," Haji Nik Mohammad, a member of the local council, told Reuters.
Paktia province is a region where the Pentagon believes remnants of bin Laden's al Qaeda network and the Taliban may be still active or in hiding.
Several raids have been carried out on Paktia in the last few days.
One of the most deadly took place just two days before the December inauguration of the new interim government in Kabul, when US jets struck a convoy carrying tribal elders and guests en route to the ceremony in Kabul.
Some 65 people were killed in that attack, and interim leader Hamid Karzai has told tribal elders that he would ask the Americans to cut back their raids in the region.
At Qalaye Niazi village cemetery, residents pointed out a new grave where they said 50 of those killed in the overnight raid had been buried. Many of the bodies were so badly damaged that they could not be identified, they said.
The other victims were semi-nomadic farmers who had been spending the winter at the village and their bodies had been returned to the mountainous region of Khost to be buried in their ancestral graves, they said.
The report could not be independently verified.
© Reuters
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