New airstrikes on Kabul claim heavy civilian toll
October 21, 2001
Summary of Al-Jazira coverage by Ali Abunimah
www.abunimah.org

The fourteenth day of heavy US airstrikes claimed a number of civilian lives in the Afghan capital Kabul today, Al-Jazira reported.

The television showed widespread destruction in the neighborhood of Khair Khana in the north of the city. Many houses were destroyed and badly damaged. A man who appeared to be in his fifties interviewed at the site of the attack said:

"We sat down to breakfast about eight o'clock, and then the American plans came to bomb this area. Many buildings have been destroyed." Pointing at a devastated building behind him the man added, "seven families lived in this building. Eighteen people were killed. We pulled out twelve of them and there are six more still under the rubble." He said that thirty others had been injured.

The television showed dead people and people with very severe injuries in hospital. I counted on the screen in the hospital scenes one dead child, one dead woman, two other bodies completely covered in sheets, three injured men, one injured woman and seven injured children. Several children had bandaged heads. One dead child had suffered shrapnel wounds to the head. A doctor said a bomb had hit the child's house injuring everyone in it and that the child had died of his injuries in the hospital.

Another injured child was shown crying next to the body of his dead mother, who was lying on a gurney covered with a bloody sheet. A man interviewed in hospital said that in one building in which about forty people lived he knew of eight who had been killed.

This latest attack accelerated the flight from Kabul and the television showed people loading belongs on to trucks in preparation for departure.

The Al-Jazira correspondent in Kandahar, Yousef Al-Shouli, said that there had been no bombing in the city of Kandahar itself today but that there were reports of attacks on outlying villages.

Al-Jazira reported that the Taliban claim that they have found pieces of an American helicopter and evidence of blood at Jabal Baba Sahib near Kandahar, where four or five American helicopters attacked yesterday. The Taliban claimed yesterday that they had hit and damaged one of the helicopters. The Al-Jazira correspondent is checking the reports.

In other news: Al-Jazira reports that five Palestinians have been killed today, Sunday, by Israeli occupation forces. At least eight Palestinians were killed on Saturday in ongoing Israeli attacks on Palestinian towns and cities. At least twenty four Palestinians have been killed since October 18, many of them children and women.

Al-Jazira routinely broadcasts statements and claims from the United States and Israeli governments, however I do not include these in the summary as they are widely available elsewhere. The purpose of these summaries is to provide reported factual details available through Al-Jazira that are unlikely to be widely reported in the US media.

Ali Abunimah
www.abunimah.org