Before Attack, 'We Never Heard the Sound of the Planes'

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, July 3 -- It was just after 2 a.m. Monday, and the village wedding party was in full swing. At one house, women were dancing and clapping and beating drums. At another, in keeping with rural Afghan tradition, men were firing rifles.

"Everyone was making so much noise that we never heard the sound of the planes. Then the bombs came and we started running," said Shahbibi, 30, a seamstress whose leg was broken in the stampede of fleeing women. "There was so much dust we couldn't see."

When the air finally cleared over Miandao village and three nearby hamlets in Uruzgan province, all bombed or strafed that morning by U.S. warplanes whose crews believed they were under attack, at least 40 people had been killed and another 100 injured, according to Afghan officials.

If accurate, the casualty count would make Monday's incident one of the deadliest single episodes of civilian casualties in an American attack since U.S.-led troops and warplanes began operations last year to hunt down and destroy remaining pockets of Taliban and al Qaeda fighters. Monday's was the second such incident in Uruzgan, where U.S. Special Forces killed 21 villagers in a January raid.

The attack has drawn sharp criticism from Afghan officials, who refrained from protesting after several earlier incidents of unintentional civilian killings because of their close alliance with the U.S.-led anti-terrorist campaign and their dependence on Western military forces to maintain security in Kabul and other vulnerable areas. Foreign Minister Abdullah demanded on Tuesday that "this situation has to come to an end," adding that "our people should be assured every measure has been taken to avoid such incidents."

A delegation of Afghan and U.S. officials reached one of the villages today by road. Officials in Kabul, the capital, said the group plans to remain in the area until Friday, trying to learn how and why the attack occurred and whether there had been any hostile fire beforehand.

U.S. military officials in Washington and Afghanistan have expressed condolences and acknowledged some errors in Monday's raids over Uruzgan by B-52 bombers and AC-130 gunships, but they have insisted that U.S. forces in the area were responding to a deliberate attack by antiaircraft guns or other weapons.

Maj. Gary Tallman, a U.S. spokesman with the group, said U.S. aircraft had flown over the area hourly for two days before the attack and each time an antiaircraft artillery piece had opened fire from inside a walled compound, the Associated Press reported from Kakarak. Tallman acknowledged that investigators had found no evidence of a gun when they visited the area but said the compound had been identified by U.S. troops on the ground and verified by global positioning satellites and lasers.

At the Pentagon, senior officials still appeared at a loss for details about the episode. Although Pentagon officials have acknowledged that an Air Force Special Operations AC-130 gunship opened fire on six locations in the area early Monday after a U.S. ground controller reported antiaircraft fire, they have been reluctant to confirm that U.S. airstrikes were responsible for the casualties.

Although U.S. ground forces were in the vicinity of the villages at the time of the attacks -- and have been described by Pentagon officials as directing the airstrikes -- Pentagon officials continued to insist they had little information and were awaiting the findings of the joint U.S.-Afghan inspection team.

The Pentagon's chief spokeswoman, Victoria Clarke, said preliminary reports from the team indicated investigators had spent several hours talking to villagers and being shown around one of the villages. They found evidence of damage but had not been able to determine the cause, she said, and they saw no bodies or graves.

"They have just begun their inquiry, so it'll take some time to develop richness of detail to know precisely what happened," Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Gregory Newbold, director of operations on the Pentagon's Joint Staff, said at a news conference.

The general did provide fresh details about recent military operations in the area, suggesting that U.S. forces had good reason to consider the region dangerous. Afghan and other coalition forces on reconnaissance missions had engaged in sporadic gun battles in the area, and U.S. warplanes had encountered occasional antiaircraft fire.

"This is an area of enormous sympathy for the Taliban and al Qaeda," Newbold said.