Article Id: SAP20011024000099

Document Id: 0glrjlt02ut5se

Insert Date: 10/25/2001

Purge Date: 11/08/2003

Publish Date: 10/24/2001

Publish Region: Near East & South Asia

Lines: 93

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Title: Afghan refugees say 20 killed as fled US bombing  

Document Number: FBIS-NES-2001-1024

Document Type: Daily Report

Document Title: FBIS Transcribed Text 

Document Region: Near East/South Asia 

Document Date: 24 Oct 2001

Division: South Asia 

Subdivision: Afghanistan, Pakistan 

Sourceline: SAP20011024000099 Hong Kong AFP in English 1101 GMT 24 Oct 2001 

AFS Number: SAP20011024000099 

Citysource: Hong Kong AFP 

Language: English 

N/A

Subslug:  

[FBIS Transcribed Text]      KILLI FAIZO, Pakistan, Oct 24 (AFP) - Afghan 

refugees arriving at the Pakistan border here Wednesday described 

Kandahar as a bombed-out ghost town after survivors recounted how at 

least 20 civilians, including nine children, were killed while trying to 

flee a US attack. 

    According to survivors who managed to escape to Pakistan, the 

civilians were on the outskirts of the southern Afghan town of Tirin Kot 

on Sunday when the tractor and trailer they were travelling on was 

bombed. Some of those who survived managed to cross the border on Tuesday 

and have been hospitalised in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta, 

the closest city to this small border village. One of them, Abdul Maroof, 

28, said that after the bombings injured people were left screaming for 

help with no hospitals nearby and the main southern city of Kandahar a 

six-hour drive away. "When the bombing started the people panicked and 

were running here and there for shelter. 

    After the bombing there was just dust because the walls and roofs of 

our mud houses had collapsed and many were trapped," he said. After the 

initial bombing, 25 people decided to flee and climbed onto a trailer 

hitched to the back of a tractor. Faizul Mohammad said as the tractor was 

leaving Tirin Kot, US warplanes zeroed in on the village and a bomb hit 

the tractor and trailer. Nineteen died immediately. 

    Mohammad lost a foot in the attack and with six other survivors 

travelled to Kandahar -- the ruling Taliban's stronghold which has been 

devastated by bombing -- in the back of pick-up trucks. They were told no 

treatment was possible there. He said the injured then travelled to the 

border crossing at Chaman where Pakistan guards allowed them to go 

hospital in Quetta. One of the casualties, a women who had lost four 

children in the bombing, later died, Mohammad said. Taliban officials 

have reported at least two other incidents of US planes bombing refugee 

convoys but they have not been possible to confirm. On Monday they 

claimed that some 30 shops had been destroyed in Tirin Kot by a US attack 

which killed scores of civilians. 

    Another Taliban official told AFP on Tuesday that some 52 civilians 

died in Chakoor Kariz village, 15 kilometres (10 miles) southeast of 

Kandahar, late on Monday night. The claims could not be independently 

verified but Arabic news station Al Jazeera broadcast pictures of people 

it said were from the village being treated in hospital. The Taliban said 

Wednesday another village in the mountains west of Tirin Kot had been 

bombed in the early hours of the morning, killing 12 people. "It is very 

remote and there are no clinics nearby where injured people can be 

treated. It is a really terrible situation," Taliban information chief 

Abdul Hanan Hemat told AFP. Refugees from the western city of Herat who 

travelled for six days to get to the eastern border with Pakistan, told 

of horrifying destruction along the main road which loops south through 

Kandahar and up to Kabul. 

    "Kandahar was completely destroyed. Everything has turned into piles 

of stones. Thousands more people are on their way here," said refugee 

Abdul Nabi after his arrival at a makeshift refugee camp here. He said he 

had seen two groups of 13 and 15 corpses, which he believed were the 

remains of civilians, near bombed out trucks on the road between Herat 

and Kandahar. The US began bombing Afghanistan's Taliban regime on 

October 7 as part of its campaign to hunt down alleged terrorist Osama 

bin Laden, blamed for the September 11 destruction in New York and 

Washington.