US cargo plane crashes in Afghanistan; Taliban negotiate surrender

Thursday February 14, 1:34 AM AFP

A US Air Force cargo plane crashed in a remote region of Afghanistan, injuring eight crew members, as Afghan officials continued to negotiate the surrender of up to 15 senior figures from the routed Taliban.

The cause of the MC-130P plane's crash was unknown but US military officials said it did not appear to be the result of hostile fire. All crew survived and their injuries were not life-threatening.

The US Central Command said in a statement that the MC-130P, a four-engine turbo-prop cargo plane commonly used for special operations, crashed around 2:50 am (2220 GMT Tuesday). The location was not clear.

It was believed to be the eighth air crash for US forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan since the bombing campaign against the Taliban militia and terror suspect Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda extremist network began on October 7.

The crash is another setback for the US military in Afghanistan as it defends itself against criticism of intelligence failures and civilian casualties.

In Kabul, civilian victims of the US-led bombing of Afghanistan gathered at the US embassy and demanded Washington pay 20 million dollars in compensation.

Among those seeking help were 21-year-old Aziz Ullah, whose left leg was sliced off by flying shrapnel, and 34-year-old Abdul Bashir, who lost "my beautiful daughter" when a bomb exploded near where she was playing in the street in October.

The demands for compensation come amid a new outcry over the civilian toll of the bombing campaign.

A senior US Army investigator said Wednesday that enough human remains had been collected from the site of a February 4 missile attack near Zhawar Kili to identify who was killed.

"We're not talking about a truckload of stuff, but it was more than an envelope," said US army Chief Warrant Officer Paul Pierce.

He could not say, however, whether his investigating team had DNA samples that would lead to the identification of individuals.

Investigators are trying to determine who was killed at the site amid speculation it could have been bin Laden, alleged mastermind of the September 11 suicide attacks in the United States.

However, Afghanistan's Deputy Border Affairs Minister Mirza Ali and local residents have said the victims of the missile attack were not al-Qaeda members but civilians gathering scrap metal from exploded ordnance to sell.

Meanwhile, an Afghan official said members of the former Taliban regime, including some in the cabinet, have been contacting authorities in the southern city of Kandahar to negotiate their surrender.

But Khalid Pashtoon, spokesman for Kandahar governor Gul Agha, told AFP that Taliban guilty of "crimes" were unlikely to give themselves up.

The Taliban who had made known their willingness to surrender, also including district governors and judges, were those who had "not committed crimes", Pashtoon said without elaborating.

He said those who surrendered would be handed over to US forces.

The highest-ranking Taliban official to have surrendered to US forces so far is former foreign minister Wakil Ahmed Mutawakel.