NYT. 27 February 2002. Afghan Witnesses Say G.I.'s Were Duped in Raid on
Allies. Excerpts.

TIRIN KOT -- Up in these mountains in southern Afghanistan, local
officials and relatives of Afghans killed by United States Special
Forces angrily reject the Pentagon's inquiry into the raid, on Jan. 24,
insisting that men were shot without a chance to surrender and that in
many cases the Americans, not the Afghans, fired first.

"The men who were killed were not animals," Jan Muhammad, the governor
of Oruzgan Province, said in dismissing the results of the Pentagon's
investigation. "The Americans know that, and if they have any love for
human beings, they will help us find the truth."

Local Afghans insist 21 people died in Oruzgan town, once the capital of
the province.

The Pentagon, which has said the raid had some unfortunate consequences
but was not in any way a failure, said Americans were fired upon;
witnesses to the raid, on a school and a government compound, say the
opposite.

"The Americans fired first," said Muhammad Kadir Agha, 30, who was
awakened by helicopters and watched the raid at the school from the roof
of his house, 200 yards away.

He said that although weapons were fired by both sides, it was easy to
distinguish between the fire of the American weapons and the shots from
Afghan guns.

In addition, an Afghan who found bodies hours after the raid said at
least eight had their hands tied behind their backs with the white
disposable plastic binding that Special Forces use as handcuffs.

In the case of a man named Tor Jan, his cousin said he saw Mr. Jan fall
as he tried to escape during the raid.

The next morning, the cousin said, he found Mr. Jan where he fell, his
body still bound. He had been shot in the neck, shoulder and stomach,
said the cousin, who uses only one name, Amanullah.

Small entry wounds on Mr. Jan's back and large exit wounds on his front
suggested that he had been shot in the back while running away, Mr.
Amanullah said.

One of the few men to escape alive from the school compound, Amanullah,
who is 25, remembers first an explosion.

He looked through the open door and saw American soldiers running and
shooting in the courtyard outside. None of the survivors interviewed
during two visits to the town recalled the Americans identifying
themselves by loudspeaker or any other means.

"They were shooting and they were coming toward the room," Amanullah
said. As the Americans opened fire into the classroom where they had
been asleep, he said, he and several other Afghan soldiers scrambled out
the windows on the far side.

As they dropped down the side of the building, they were caught in the
glare of a powerful light and a hail of more bullets. Mr. Amanullah ran
for cover, but saw his cousin fall behind him. American soldiers were
quickly upon the man, he said, tying his hands behind his back.

For several nights before the Americans attacked, townspeople said, they
heard helicopters overhead in the dead of night.

On Jan. 24, at about 3 a.m., helicopters landed in two places, a short
distance south of the stone school and just south of the hill on which
the district government compound sits.

The helicopters dropped at least one armored vehicle on the open ground
behind the school, witnesses said. A spotlight from the vehicle bathed
the school in light as American soldiers in black masks and desert
camouflage fanned out around the compound.

Survivors from the school said that some of their comrades fired on the
Americans, but that the Americans had fired first. At least three
survivors said the shooting began with an explosion near the room in
which the school's two commanders were sleeping.

Those two commanders, Abdul Qadoos and his deputy, Sana Gul, died in the
room, which was gutted from fire and contained the twisted remains of a
rocket-propelled grenade several days after the raid. There was also a
large mass of congealed blood on the wall outside the room.

Mr. Amanullah said that at least three men were found dead in classrooms
where they had been sleeping, and apparently had no chance to surrender
before being shot; neighbors who removed the bodies and two other
survivors interviewed suggested that more than three men had died this
way.

Six large blood stains mark the floor of one of the classrooms, dried to
a dark greasy brown.

Sayeed Muhammad, 25, was sleeping in a classroom with 12 people,
including his cousin Shah Muhammad, when he was awakened by shooting
through the windows and near the commanders' room.

He said that Shah Muhammad picked up the only weapon in the room and
started shooting from the door but that there were only four rounds in
the gun.

Sayeed Muhammad said he jumped through the back window along with other
men and a bullet or shrapnel hit him in the foot. Both he and Mr.
Amanullah fled barefoot across the open ground and through the
compound's gate, and took refuge in a nearby mosque.

Abdul Ali, 39, whose house is to the southwest of the school, said he
was awakened by one of his two wives, who said there was shooting
outside. He ran to the roof and saw that helicopters had landed nearby.

Soon an explosion blew the heavy metal gate of his compound off its
hinges, and a dozen or more American soldiers ran into his yard throwing
down plastic tubes that emitted bright light, he said.

The Americans tied his hands with the white plastic band that the
Special Forces use as handcuffs.

"They were asking me things in Arabic but I don't understand Arabic,"
Mr. Ali said several days afterward. The soldiers did not appear to
understand Pashto or Dari, Afghanistan's main languages, he said.

The Americans eventually cut his hands free and then locked him, his
wives and 17 children in their kitchen, where they heard the subsequent
bombardment of the school. His father-in-law found them at about 6:30
a.m.

Mr. Amanullah said he saw one of the guards having his hands tied by the
Americans. All of the other people who failed to escape from the school
were killed.

Almost simultaneously with the school raid, American commandos were
swarming over the district government office, police station and jail,
less than a mile away.

Survivors there, mostly newly recruited guards, said they were awakened
by helicopters, gunfire and shouting in English and saw figures wearing
camouflage, black masks and goggles and carrying flashlights.

Allah Nur, 40, got up from his mattress on the floor and went outside to
see soldiers tying the hands of his comrades. He went back inside and
told the police chief, "There are people outside whose language I do not
understand."

"He said, 'Don't worry, they are our friends,' " Mr. Nur said, recalling
the chief's response. " 'They will do nothing. Stay in here.' "

The chief, Abdul Rauf, 60, said he stepped outside and tried to tell the
Americans that the Afghans were friendly forces.

"I was shouting, Dost! Dost!' ['We are friends!'], but they were not
listening," Chief Rauf said.

"And I was telling my men that they are friends, but American soldiers
came over and started to beat me."

He said none of his men fired.

The Americans fired a stun grenade into the room where Mr. Nur had been
sleeping and all the men there surrendered immediately, Mr. Nur said.
"We put up our hands and said 'Don't shoot -- we are friends,' " he
added.

Ziauddin, 50, said that as they filed out he saw his friend, Abdul Nafi,
20, dead outside the room.

"He was here and went out when he heard the aircraft," Mr. Ziauddin
said. He was not sure whether Mr. Nafi had been carrying a gun.

"He just got engaged," Mr. Ziauddin said. "He's dead now."

The Afghans say the Americans punched, kicked and beat them, tied their
hands and feet with white plastic bands and hung light sticks around
their necks before blindfolding and hooding them and leading them away
to helicopters.

Other soldiers, meanwhile, swept down the hill to another group of
buildings where the former district government chief, Muhammad Yunas,
had been sleeping with dozens more men. He, too, called for his men to
hold their fire, having recognized the soldiers as Americans.

Instead, he said shortly after the raid, the Americans opened fire.

Mr. Yunas and most of the other men in the building escaped. A guard who
was killed, Muhammad Karem, was only 16, according to Mr. Irfani, the
new district chief in Oruzgan.

The Americans moved through the remaining buildings, scattering light
sticks and searching for people. They found six ethnic Hazaras locked in
a windowless dungeon. The Americans bound the prisoners' hands and took
them into the helicopters as well.

Shortly after the helicopters left, an AC-130 gunship showered both
compounds with rockets and heavy fire, apparently an attempt to destroy
munitions stored at both sites. The airstrikes destroyed one ammunition
dump at the district government compound but missed other weapons caches
there and left the weapons storerooms at the school untouched.

After an anxious night in the mosque, Mr. Amanullah was the first to
return to the school. He found Tor Jan where he had fallen on a pile of
rocks. "I laid my shawl over him," he said.

Mr. Amanullah said he counted eight dead with their hands tied behind
them. He and a few friends cut the white plastic bands off and carried
the bodies away for burial.

"They had bullet wounds but I did not look more," he said. "I was very
sad and confused, and took my cousin and went."

Most of the dead were found in the rooms and the central courtyard of
the school, many burned from fires in the rooms. Shah Muhammad had
nearly reached the gate and had half his foot blown away and a fractured
femur protruding from his thigh.

He, too, was found with his hands bound behind his back.