AFGHANISTAN - Dec.6 - Attack On Taliban Kills 9 Children.

Nine children die in a US air strike against a Taliban suspect in a hamlet some 300 km south of Kabul. A 25-year-old man is also killed, while the Taliban suspect appears to have gotten away. (Shocked and angry, villagers later mourned their children as men gathered in an open-air mosque and women weeped inside the houses. As the men showed journalists and a government delegation around the scene of the attack, they wondered aloud why the US attacked so indiscriminately when searching for just one man and why innocent civilians had to die when the man was not even in the village. The attack raised questions about the effectiveness of using air power to catch fugitive Taliban and Al Qaeda members sheltering in villages. Pres. Karzai said he was "profoundly shocked" at the deaths of the children and added that he had sent a delegation to investigate and offer help to the families. In an interview with the BBC, Karzai said future operations should be better co-ordinated with the Kabul government so it should never happen again. Villagers and local officials echoed his sentiments. "They bombed this place and said we were giving sanctuary to the Taliban and Al Qaeda, but there are no Taliban or Al Qaeda here. We all support the government", said the school principal and local mullah Abdul Majid Farooqi. US officials said the attack was aimed at Mullah Wazir, said to be behind a number of Taliban attacks on aid workers and construction engineers working on a major US project to rebuild the road linking Kabul and Kandahar. The US ambassador to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, on Dec.7 told a news conference in Kabul that Wazir was a known "financier, organizer and facilitator of attacks on aid workers and workers on the highways". Two Indian workers employed on the project were kidnapped in Zabul Province on Dec.6. There has been a rash of kidnappings and shootings in the area along the road, especially in Zabul Province, just south of the village of Pitawi, all apparently attacks by the Taliban to disrupt the reconstruction effort. Villagers said Wazir did indeed live in the village but that he had left 2 weeks ago with his family after an earlier air strike, when planes fired into the field. US soldiers pointed out Wazir's house, which they had searched. It was untouched by the bombardment. The children were killed just 10 metres in front of the house. Hundreds of civilians have been killed in air strikes in the 2 years since the US launched its campaign against the Taliban and Al Qaeda. After several disastrous raids in 2002, when US planes bombed officials loyal to the Karzai government and in one incident killed some 48 civilians attending a wedding party, the US military appeared to restrict its air assaults to more precise attacks).