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NYT. 28 January 2002. After Green Beret Operation, Townspeople Have Questions About Bound Bodies. Excerpts. ORUZGAN -- No American had visited this mountain-ringed town recently, residents said today, until early Thursday, when helicopters dangling Humvees descended from the sky and spilled shouting, shooting Green Berets into two small compounds, a mile and a half apart. Two hours later, 21 local soldiers were dead and 27 others had been captured and taken away. At daybreak, when neighbors and a few who escaped the carnage ventured back to inspect the damage, they said they found the charred bodies of more than a dozen men who had been shot and burned in the rooms of one of the compounds. Townspeople said they had also found two bodies outside the compound, their hands tied behind them with strips of tough white plastic. The Pentagon defends the raid as an appropriate military action. But in dozens of interviews this weekend, residents in this town 100 miles north of Kandahar in southern Afghanistan said the two-hour raid before dawn, which ended with an American's plane firing at the compound, was an error. At the scene, Ahmad Shah, a wizened farmer whose house is 100 yards from the school, said he had helped move one of the two bound bodies. He said "I never had seen anything like" the binding, adding, "It was very strong, and we couldn't open it and finally had to cut it off." During the raid, Mr. Shah said he heard people in the compound shouting: "For God's sake, do not kill us! We surrender!" All the officials and local commanders interviewed in the area, including the provincial governor, insist that Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters are no longer in the area, which has been quiet since the interim government took power in Kabul on Dec. 22. Sayeed Muhammad, a 25-year-old soldier who had been posted for a month at the school, said he had wakened to the sound of gunfire shattering the windows and door of the room in which he and 11 other men were sleeping. "There was only one gun in the room," Mr. Muhammad said, picking at a bloody bandage on his foot during an interview in the stove-heated room of a local commander tonight. He said Shah Muhammad, a cousin, had grabbed the gun and started shooting from the door. Sayeed Muhammad said the gun, an AK-47 that he had carried while on guard duty that night, had only four bullets. Many of the men in the room were killed almost immediately, he said. "I jumped through the back window and felt something hit my foot as I did," he said. Outside, he said, he was blinded by the light of a big vehicle parked 50 yards away. "I ran for the gate, and I don't know how I made it out alive," he said. Mr. Muhammad, who wears a black turban that is customary in this area and which the Taliban adopted, said there had been no Taliban or Al Qaeda in the compound. "We were working for the governor of the province and for Hamid Karzai," he said. Jan Muhammad Khan, who was recently appointed governor of Oruzgan Province by Mr. Karzai, said in an interview on Saturday that the men in the compound had been working for him. While the Pentagon has said the raid was directed at a munitions store, Mr. Khan disputed that, saying the men at the compound had been given the task of collecting weapons left behind by departing Taliban. Sayeed Muhammad said he had watched from a nearby mosque as the gunfire and shouting died down and a helicopter landed atop the schoolhouse, apparently to retrieve the American troops. Within minutes of the helicopter's departure, Mr. Muhammad said, a plane fired what he believes were rockets into the compound. "It was a very big plane, very loud, moving very slowly," Mr. Muhammad said, apparently describing an AC-130, a flying warship that carries a Gatling gun and cannons. At dawn, people who live near the schoolhouse recalled, they gathered in the courtyard to collect the dead, 19 in that compound. Obiad Ullah, 37, said he had found a man named Abdul Rauf lying on a pile of stones that morning. Mr. Rauf's body was covered with blood, and his hands were bound behind him with a plastic strip. Mr. Shah, the farmer who lives near the school, said he had found the other dead man, Shah Muhammad, lying face down near the compound's gate. One of his thigh bones was protruding from his leg, and half of one foot was missing, this witness said. His hands, too, were bound behind his body. The 27 captured came from the other compound, where two people were reported killed. Muhammad Yunas, one of two men claiming to be Oruzgan's district government chief, who controlled that compound, said that after the soldiers and their captives were gone, gunfire and rockets rained from the sky, destroying the ammunition dump. Mr. Yunas said he had found a piece of paper showing an American flag on the windshield of one of the compound's destroyed pickup trucks. Large letters on the paper read, "God Bless America," and in one corner, someone had written: "Have a nice day. From Damage, Inc." . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Barry Stoller http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ProletarianNews --------------------------- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^================================================================ This email was sent to: [email protected] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9WB2D Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
