Stray U.S. bomb hits Kabul neighborhood

29/04/2001| IslamWeb

CNN) -- A stray bomb from a U.S. warplane struck a neighborhood near Kabul's airport Saturday, a senior Pentagon official told CNN. (Read photo caption below)
The bomb came from a Navy jet that was targeting a helicopter on the ground at the airport in the Afghan capital Kabul, the officials said. Instead, the precision-guided bomb struck a civilian neighborhood about a mile away.
Reports of deaths on the ground could not be immediately confirmed after the incident, which occurred about 1:30 p.m. Saturday (5 a.m. EDT). U.S. officials said they have tried to avoid civilian deaths but said some casualties will be unavoidable in their anti-terrorist campaign.
Saturday's incident marks at least the second time during the week-old conflict that a bomb has gone astray. In the first case, a Tomahawk cruise missile aimed at a communications tower went astray at about the same time that four local U.N. workers were killed in a compound near the tower. Officials said the missile may have caused their deaths.
The U.S.-led raids resumed Saturday after a break for the Muslim day of prayer Friday. President Bush said Saturday the U.S. and British strikes on Afghanistan have "achieved the goals of the first phase of the campaign."
"We have crippled the Taliban's air defenses," he said. "American forces dominate the skies over Afghanistan, and we will use that dominance to make sure terrorists can no longer freely use Afghanistan as a base of operations."
PHOTO CAPTION:
Anti-aircraft fire over Kabul on Saturday. (Courtesy: Aljazeera TV Satellite Stateion, Doha, Qatar)