Afghanistan: US, NATO, Karzai regime investigate Azizabad massacre

With mounting civilian casualties threatening to produce a nationwide backlash against the occupation of the country, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates, during an unannounced visit to Bagram air base September 19, restated the order by General David McKiernan, NATO commander in Afghanistan, to convene a joint investigation.

The US military and Afghan authorities are to officially investigate United Nations-backed reports by villagers in Azizabad, western Afghanistan, that an August 22 coalition air strike killed at least 90 people, 60 of whom were children and 15 women.

The attack was carried out by a US AC-130 ground attack aircraft, equipped with a rapid-fire five-barrel 25mm Gatling gun, a 40mm Bofors cannon and a 105mm howitzer. The gunship is designed to lay waste to exposed targets with an indiscriminate torrent of bullets and artillery shells.

Accounts from survivors of the attack describe repeated strikes on houses where dozens of children were sleeping, and parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts huddled inside with them. Most of the village families were asleep when the shooting broke out, some sleeping out under mosquito nets in the yards of their houses while others slept inside the small rooms of their houses, lying close together on the floor, with up to 20 people in a room.

The US military has not only sought to conceal its guilt in this latest war crime perpetrated on the Afghan people, but has used every opportunity to discredit accounts of eyewitnesses and survivors.

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