By CHRIS TOMLINSON, Associated Press Writer
                Monday December 3 5:57 PM ET

                KAMA ADO, Afghanistan - Children's shoes, bits of charred carpet and cooking pots litter what is left of this hamlet,
                along with dead cows and sheep. Here and there are craters, some 20 feet wide. One holds the tail fin from a Mk83
                1,000-pound bomb.

                The United States says it is targeting Osama bin Laden's followers around this village in northeastern Afghanistan. But
                anti-Taliban leaders say local villagers, not terrorists, are dying in the raids because Americans are using faulty intelligence.

                On Monday provincial officials brought reporters to see what they said was the destruction done by U.S. bombs at Kama
                Ado, about a half-hour walk along a trail from the nearest town.

                Witnesses and survivors say U.S. warplanes dropped more than 25 bombs in four passes over the village on Saturday.
                One resident, Kamal Huddin, said 155 of the 300 residents were killed.

                ``We were farmers. We were poor people. And we didn't have any contact with any organizations,'' Huddin said. His
                dust-covered face was streaked with tears as he dug out his few remaining possessions - a few clothes and a wooden
                plow.

                In Washington, Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem told reporters he had seen no evidence to support
                reports of U.S. bombs striking civilian villages in the area.

                ``We have heard anecdotal reports that this is an area where Osama bin Laden has been using some of his wealth to buy
                local village chieftains' support,'' Stufflebeem said.

                Mohammed Zeman, the provincial anti-Taliban defense chief, says up to 1,200 non-Afghan fighters may be hiding in the
                White Mountains, specifically in cave complexes near Tora Bora and Mawal, more than six miles from Kama Ado.

                But Zeman insisted that his men control the Kama Ado area, that the village elders have pledged their support in fighting
                the Taliban and al-Qaida.

                He also said anti-Taliban fighters have been among the bombing victims and showed reporters the bodies of seven of his
                men.

                ``These are my villagers. I sent them the day before yesterday to provide security in the town, and now they are dead,''
                Zeman said. He said he had asked U.S. authorities to stop the attacks, but had received no response.

                If bin Laden money was funneled to Kama Ado, there was little to show for it in what's left of the village of about 30
                simple mud homes with straw roofs.

                Unlike other Taliban and al-Qaida bases, there were no documents, no heavy weapons, no ammunition boxes, just three
                rocket-propelled grenades in one of the homes. Such weapons are common in Afghanistan and every village has a few to
                protect it in the absence of a police force.

                Residents, who had spent their entire lives farming terraced fields irrigated with melting snow from the White Mountains,
                claimed fighters from the Taliban and al-Qaida had never even visited them.

                Huddin said he and men from neighboring villages dug 44 graves Sunday, each marked with timber scavenged from the
                wreckage.

                ``We put as many as four to five bodies in each grave. But most of it was just pieces of bodies. We filled the graves up
                with those pieces,'' Huddin said.

                Coalition spokesman Kenton Keith said military pilots who dropped bombs in the area ``think they hit their targets,'' but
                added coalition officials were checking the reports of civilians killed.

                ``We do have an overriding imperative ... and that is to root out international terrorism,'' he said Monday in Islamabad,
                Pakistan. ``We do not deliberately target civilians ... and al-Qaida did deliberately target civilians on Sept. 11.''

                Zeman said bombing late Sunday in the nearby village of Agom killed seven anti-Taliban fighters and five civilians.

                The attack followed another on the same village earlier Sunday that destroyed an anti-Taliban headquarters and killed eight
                people, Zeman said. Dozens of people have been treated at a hospital in Jalalabad.

                The coalition launched attacks on the Taliban on Oct. 7 after they refused to turn over bin Laden, the prime suspect in the
                terrorist attacks in the United States. Zeman and Ali both say they support U.S. airstrikes, but only in the mountains.

                Men and boys near Kama Ado watched Monday morning as an American B-52 bomber streaked across the sky and
                plumes of black smoke rose from the White Mountains. Malik Nazeer, a tribal elder, said that was where the bombs
                should fall, not on his people's villages.

                Nazeer said he understood the fight against terrorism, but said his people were now suffering for no other reason than that
                they live in Afghanistan.

                ``We were unhappy about the people who were killed on Sept. 11. They were killed by terrorists. But now we are dying,''
                Nazeer said. ``Why don't Americans recognize that?''
 
 

                                      Villages pay price as US bombs go awry

                By Philip Smucker in Jalalabad
                The Telegraph (UK)
                December 4, 2001

                SCORES of villagers have been killed by off-target American bombing of Tora Bora, Osama bin Laden's suspected
                mountain hideout, a senior anti-Taliban commander said yesterday.

                Last night, as the barrage continued, explosions could be heard from the outskirts of the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad,
                to the north of Tora Bora. Villagers said bombs had missed the target and landed in their impoverished communities a few
                miles from the cave complex.

                Injured Afghans last night packed the emergency wards of Jalalabad's main hospital as relatives, some of whom said they
                had lost dozens of members of their extended families, denounced the bombings as grossly off-target.

                Haji Zaman Ghamsharik, the regional military commander, said bin Laden was sighted in the area three days ago and had
                been sent a message appealing for negotiations to end the bloodshed.

                He said bin Laden was asked to consider the hardship he was bringing to the Afghan people as American aircraft bombed
                the area. Almost 100 civilians had died over the past three days of raids, he added.

                Hazrat Ali, the provincial security chief, said two elders claimed to have received a message from bin Laden in which he
                said he did not want to fight fellow Muslims, only "foreign troops".

                Mr Ali said he had sent a delegation to the White Mountains to negotiate the surrender of the foreign fighters defending bin
                Laden's mountain base. If they do not comply, he said, they would come under attack from a force of 1,500 troops sent
                from Jalalabad within days.

                Kenton Keith, the spokesman for the US-led coalition, said reports of civilian casualties around Tora Bora were being
                checked but he could not confirm whether any American bombs had gone astray and accused the Taliban of using "human
                shields".

                Moor Mohamed was still conscious even as doctors said they doubted he would survive. Both of his mangled arms had
                been amputated. "How can the Americans be so blind?" said Sultan Mohamed, the boy's uncle. "Everyone says Osama is
                seven miles deep inside Tora Bora in a cave; nowhere near our village."

                The strikes on his home were carried out with large "dumb bombs" that blew giant craters in the earth and levelled the mud
                brick houses at the base of the White Mountains. Dozens of men, women and children were reported to have been buried.

                "At 2.30am we heard a huge noise of something hitting our village," said Sultan Mohamed. "It was a giant bomb but it just
                hit with a thud and did not explode. The second one hit nearby and the third one hit our roof. Moor was sleeping and it
                took us two hours to pry him free from the rubble. I'm afraid it was too late."

                In the same ward, 14 other men and boys were critically injured. A room down the hall for females included still younger
                children, who had been injured in the blast while sleeping.

                Over two days, three villages were hit, all of them at the base of Tora Bora, but apparently far down the road from the
                Arab guerrillas of bin Laden's al-Qa'eda organisation. Dick Cheney, the US vice president, last week said he believed that
                bin Laden was hiding in the vast Tora Bora cave network. British defence sources said they had similar intelligence.

                The US strikes appeared widely off-target. At least 15 fighters and administrators working with a Western-backed
                warlord in Jalalabad were killed in bombing. Cdr Ghamsharik had boasted of meeting US representatives in Jalalabad last
                week.

                Lala Agha, a villager, said he had helped to place 22 bodies in lorries and driven them to a burial ground: "I was in a house
                when the bombs hit and we raced outside digging for bodies. I think there are still dozens buried in the earth."

                The young man said some of his fellow villagers were now angry at the commander. "They say that Haji Zaman told the
                Americans to bomb," he said.

                At the main hospital in Jalalabad most of the families of the injured and dying blamed the US military. They said they
                understood that the Americans had been targeting bin Laden, but questioned how "smart bomb" strikes could have gone
                so far afield. Niaz Mohamad, 45, said: "The US says that they can see everything. Why don't they hit Osama and not us?"

                Some of the villagers vehemently denied that there were any Arabs living in their area. Three weeks ago, a convoy of
                several hundred Arabs are said to have left their vehicles on the road into Tora Bora.

                A 60-year-old man who lost his wife and two grandsons said he escaped because he had left home for the evening prayer.
                "The Americans are shouting that they will bring peace, but they can't find Osama and instead they bomb us."