9 children dead after U.S. raid

KABUL, Afghanistan - Nine children were found dead after an American air raid in eastern Afghanistan on Saturday, the U.S. military said.

An American A-10 aircraft struck a site south of Ghazni where a "known terrorist" was believed to be hiding about 10:30 a.m. Saturday, Army Maj. Christopher E. West told the Associated Press.

"Following the attack, ground coalition forces searching the area found the bodies of both the intended target and those of nine children nearby," he said.

The U.S. military was sending a team of investigators to the site to determine if U.S. forces were at fault, West said.

Coalition forces "will make every effort to assist the families of these innocent casualties and determine the cause of the civilian deaths," he said from the U.S. headquarters in Bagram, Afghanistan.

"We regret the loss of any innocent life and we follow stringent rules of engagement to specifically avoid this type of incident while continuing to target terrorists who threaten the future of Afghanistan," West said.

U.S. forces were targeting a suspected militant believed responsible for killing two foreign contractors who were working on a road in Afghanistan, he said.

West said U.S. troops collected "extensive intelligence over an extended period of time" and located the suspect at an "isolated, rural site."

He said that there were other houses nearby but that the aircraft did not strike them.

"At the time we initiated the attack, we did not know there were children nearby," he said. "Until we get the investigation results, we can't say what exactly happened."

Separately, a bomb exploded Saturday afternoon in a busy central street of the southern town of Kandahar, damaging stores and cars and wounding 18 people, several of them seriously.

The bomb was placed in a pressure cooker on the back of a bicycle, said Gen. Muhammad Salim Ehsas, the deputy police chief. It exploded in the street, just yards from the main square.

People in stores, in cars and on motorbikes were wounded, local journalists said. Seven people were seriously hurt.

It was not clear who was responsible for the explosion, Ehsas said, because there was no obvious military, government or foreign presence in the area. But other officials were quick to accuse former Taliban fighters, who have been active in the area recently, or al-Qaida.

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