Afghans die in U.S. raids on 'bad guys'

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - A U.S. air raid in southern Afghanistan killed 11 villagers, including four children, Afghan officials said Monday. The U.S. military said it killed five militants in the weekend raid in insurgency-plagued Uruzgan province.

Sunday's incident came as American commanders and Afghan officials hunt for Taliban and al-Qaida suspects and try to improve security in the lawless south and east ahead of planned summer elections.

Abdul Rahman, chief of Char Chino district in Uruzgan, said the attack occurred about 9 p.m. Sunday in Saghatho, a village where he said U.S. forces hunting for insurgents had carried out searches and made several arrests.

He said the victims were outside a house and a helicopter was hovering nearby when "a big plane came and dropped bombs."

"They were simple villagers, they were not Taliban. I don't know why the U.S. bombed this home," he told an Associated Press reporter by telephone in the southern city of Kandahar.

The provincial governor, Jan Mohammed Khan, confirmed Rahman's account that four men, four children and three women were killed in the American attack.

He said U.S. authorities told him they found ammunition in a search of the village. During the search, "the people were afraid, they started running," Khan said.

Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty, a U.S. military spokesman, said a warplane killed five armed militants north of Deh Rawood, a town in Uruzgan where the American military has a base, but had no more information. Saghatho is 25 miles north of Deh Rawood.

"They were running away from a known bad-guy site," Hilferty told the AP, insisting military planners "carefully weigh the use of deadly force."

Three U.S. soldiers were wounded Sunday when about 15 insurgents opened fire on the Deh Rawood base with rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns. One attacker was killed when American soldiers returned fire.

The soldiers, all injured by shrapnel, were in stable condition at the main U.S. military base at Bagram, north of Kabul.

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