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U.S. indicts al Qaeda-trained shoebomb suspect
By James Vicini
Thursday January 17, 5:38 AM
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Richard Reid, a British citizen who trained with Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network in Afghanistan, was indicted on Wednesday for attempting to destroy an airliner with 197 people on board last month when he tried to ignite explosives in his shoes.
The indictment, handed up by a federal grand jury in Massachusetts, said Reid had received training from al Qaeda, which the United States has blamed for the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
"Reid is charged as an al Qaeda-trained terrorist who attempted to destroy American Airlines flight 63 with explosive devices concealed in his shoes," U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft told a news conference in announcing the indictment.
The 28-year-old Reid was aboard American Airlines Flight 63 bound from Paris to Miami on December 22 when he was overpowered by passengers and crew. The plane then landed in Boston, where he was taken into custody.
The nine-count indictment charged Reid with attempted murder, attempted homicide and attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction -- "a destructive device consisting of an explosive bomb in each of his shoes."
Other charges included placing an explosive device on an aircraft, attempted destruction of aircraft, interfering with flight crew members and flight attendants, using a destructive device during a violent crime and attempted wrecking of a mass transportation vehicle.
REID FACES LIFE IN PRISON
Reid faces a maximum penalty of life in prison if convicted on the charges. The next step in the case will be an arraignment, when a plea typically is entered to the charges.
Investigators have been trying to determine whether Reid was trying to follow up on the September 11 hijacked plane attacks that killed more than 3,000 people.
Ashcroft and Justice Department officials declined to give details about Reid's alleged training with al Qaeda. The indictment only said it happened "at various times."
Ashcroft declined to say whether Reid was acting alone or on al Qaeda's orders. He also declined to comment when asked whether Reid had any accomplices.
Ashcroft praised Americans for heeding a call made by U.S. authorities after September 11 to be more vigilant to help prevent future attacks.
"Reid's indictment alerts us to a clear, unmistakable threat that al Qaeda could attack the United States again," he said.
"We must be prepared, we must be alert, we must be vigilant. Al Qaeda-trained terrorists may act on their own, or as part of the terrorist network, but we must assume that they will act," Ashcroft said.
CREW VIGILANT, PASSENGERS COURAGEOUS
"But for the vigilance of the flight crew and the courage of the passengers on Flight 63, Richard Reid may have succeeded in what today's indictment charges was his ultimate goal -- the destruction of Flight 63 and the 197 people on board," he said.
The FBI said last month that preliminary tests showed Reid's black athletic shoes contained enough of a powerful plastic explosive to blow a hole in the side of the plane.
Reid worshiped at the same London mosque as Zacarias Moussaoui, a Frenchman of Moroccan descent who is the only person charged in the United States with being part of the September 11 attacks. Moussaoui is awaiting trial in Virginia.
Reid has been ordered by a federal magistrate judge in Boston to be held without bail.
Thursday January 17, 2:34 AM AFP
US forces have discovered canisters at an undisclosed site in Afghanistan that from the outside appear to be chemical weapons, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said.
"There are canisters that have been found that ... externally .. appear to be weapons of mass destruction. But until we get into them, look at them, analyze it, find out what it was, we're not going to know," he said
Rumsfeld said the canisters appeared to contain chemical weapons.
US forces have searched more than 40 sites in Afghanistan that US intelligence had linked to weapons of mass destruction, but so far have found no hard evidence that al-Qaeda or the Taliban had succeeded in acquiring weapons of mass destruction.
Most of the sites have turned out to be drug processing labs.
Radioactivity detected at one site was probably from depleted uranium warheads and not materials for making a radiological weapon, according to Rumsfeld.
A handful of sites are yet to be explored, and test results from some sites has not yet come back, he added.
"To my knowledge we have found a number of things that show an appetite for weapons of mass destruction -- diagrams, materials, reports that things that were asked for, things were discussed at meetings, that type of thing," he said.
"In terms of having hard evidence of actual possession of weapons of mass destruction, I do not have that at this stage," he said.
Thursday January 17, 1:13 AM AFP
Kabul's airport, heavily damaged during the US campaign in Afghanistan, was officially reopened after being cleared of bombs and mines.
"This is the start of a new era for Afghan aviation," the interim Afghan Minister for Air Transport and Tourism, Abdul Rahman said Wednesday, as the national airline Ariana announced plans to resume international flights next week.
The airport, which has had limited use for domestic flights since early December, was cleared for full service after weeks of mine clearance and repairs to the main runway.
Domestic flights in Afghanistan were suspended in September before the start of US air strikes, undertaken in the hunt for suspected terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden and to help topple the Taliban regime which sheltered him.
International flights were suspended a year ago as part of sanctions against the hardline Taliban
International community moves to ease Afghan cash crisis
Wednesday January 16, 4:42 PM AFP
The international community has moved to ease Afghanistan's cash crisis and restore its links with the rest of the world after a lull in US bombing raids against former al-Qaeda training camps.
Secretary of State Colin Powell, who arrived in Islamabad Wednesday at the start of an Asian tour including Afghanistan, signalled en route to Pakistan that the United States would free some 220 million dollars in frozen government assets.
The Afghan Central Bank assets, much of which are held in gold by the US Federal Reserve Bank, were seized in 1999 after Afghanistan's former Taliban rulers refused to hand over militants linked to attacks the previous year on US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya.
Powell told reporters accompanying him on a trip to South Asia and Japan, he would tell Hamid Karzai's interim government that operating money should be made available this week.
"It's really just the beginning, though. They're really going to need a lot of help. There are a lot of bills there."
The bulk of the assets are gold worth around 195 million dollars and about 25 million dollars more was held in frozen bank accounts.
A further 23 million dollars would also be made available to the interim government -- the product of frozen overflight charges paid by foreign airlines transiting Afghan airspace, he said.
Powell will end his week-long Asian tour by attending an international donor conference starting Monday in Tokyo dedicated to rebuilding Afghanistan.
On Monday, a spokesman for UN special envoy to Afghanistan Lakhdar Brahimi said Afghanistan was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, with assets of less than 10 million dollars. The following day representatives of 16 donor countries met to try to finds ways of providing cash quickly.
Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah said Tuesday around 10 million dollars was needed immediately to provide about a month's salary to civil servants who had not been paid for six months.
On Tuesday the United Nations Security Council voted to lift a ban on the Afghan airline Ariana, which was imposed a year ago when the Taliban regime was in power.
The resolution also ended financial restrictions imposed on the airline in October 1999 as part of sanctions designed to force the Taliban to hand over alleged master terrorist Osama bin Laden.
The council is expected to adopt a separate resolution later this week ending a 27-month-old ban on all flights into and out of Afghanistan.
There have been no reports of US bombing raids since Monday but US forces had found "very sizeable arsenals" of weapons in new caves and tunnels uncovered by ground troops, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Tuesday.
"And the result of this effort is that additional intelligence information is being gathered, and very, very sizeable arsenals are being discovered," he said.
"Tanks, and artillery pieces and surface-to-air missiles and small arms and all kinds of things that they've been in the process of destroying," he said.
His comments followed the demolition by US bombing raids of a huge al-Qaeda complex in the area around Zhawar in eastern Afghanistan. US forces found a network of caves and buildings sprawled over a 4.8 square kilometer (three square mile) area.
US warplanes used precision guided bombs over more than a week to level some 60 surface structures, close 50 caves and destroy artillery and tanks that were found there.
Meanwhile, US Marines, investigating a sighting of suspected gunmen, blew up a bunker Tuesday that they discovered several hundred meters from their positions at the Kandahar airport, a US military spokesman said.
No people or weapons were found but the incident followed a probing attack on Friday on marine positions at the airport in southern Afghanistan shortly after a US military transport plane took off with detainees bound for Cuba.
The bunker was found after marines spotted five possible Afghan fighters moving around near the airport on Monday night, said Navy Commander Dan Keesee, a spokesman for the US Central Command in Tampa, Florida.
"They appeared to be armed," he said.
The marines sent out a patrol Tuesday morning that found and destroyed a small underground bunker in a natural rock formation, he said.
Wednesday January 16, 4:06 PM AFP
SEOUL, Jan 16 Asia Pulse - The Korea International Trade Association [KITA] has asked the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade to ease visa restrictions for businesspeople from Afghanistan and Pakistan with good references, the association said Wednesday.
The visa process was tightened for people from those countries after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States.
"South Korea's exports to those nations have slowed since the measures," a source at the KITA said.
From January-August last year, before the terrorist attacks, Korea's exports to Afghanistan rose 55.8 per cent year-on-year while those to Pakistan dropped only 4.6 per cent from a year ago.
During the Oct.-Nov. 2001 period, however, exports to Afghanistan plummeted by as much as 40.8 per cent year-on-year, while those to Pakistan retreated 28 per cent.
Daschle Addresses Media in Kabul (AP)
Wednesday January 16 7:38 AM ET
KABUL, Afghanistan (news - web sites) (Reuters) - Five U.S. senators and a congresswoman led by Senate majority leader Tom Daschle expressed full support Wednesday for Afghan interim leader Hamid Karzai and said the United States must stay involved in Afghanistan for the long term.
Speaking after meeting Karzai, Daschle said what began as a U.S.-led war against terrorism was now continuing as a campaign to help Afghanistan rebuild its country and restore popular government.
They made a short stop in Kabul one day before Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) was expected to visit for a few hours, during which he was also due to meet Karzai.
``We strongly believe that our country needs to be here for the long haul, that we aren't going to leave once the effort to defeat terrorism has been completed,'' Daschle, a South Dakota Democrat, told journalists at the recently reopened U.S. embassy.
Afghans who fought the Soviet Union and the hard-line Taliban, chased from Kabul in November after five years in power, have heavily criticized Washington for dropping its earlier support after Moscow withdrew its troops in 1989.
The group was on a fact-finding tour of Central Asia, including stops in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Afghanistan as well as Pakistan. They were due to return to Uzbekistan later Wednesday on their way home.
``Afghanistan is the first battlefield of the 21st century in the war against terrorism,'' said Richard Durbin, an Illinois Democrat.
``We would never have succeeded, even with the bravery and skill of our great armed forces, if it wasn't for the people of this country standing with us. Now we need to stand with them.
``If we walk away from Afghanistan, it sends a message across the world about the next battleground in the war against terrorism.''
Durbin said the group felt very strongly that they should do all they could to have Washington unblock any frozen Afghan funds in the United States to give Kabul a desperately needed injection of cash to get its interim administration working.
Wednesday January 16 10:32 AM ET
By VERENA VON DERSCHAU, Associated Press Writer
PARIS (AP) - Two men have been arrested in France on suspicion of providing support to the assassins of Afghan resistance leader Ahmed Shah Massood, judicial officials said Wednesday.
The arrests are part of an intensive manhunt for those responsible for killing Massood just days before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The suicide assassins apparently posed as journalists and detonated a rigged TV camera, mortally wounding him.
The two men were taken into custody on Monday and identified by French judicial officials as Abderammane Ameuroude, a 24-year-old Algerian, and Mehrez Azouz, a Frenchman of Tunisian descent. Officials said intelligence agents also seized a significant amount of evidence from the men's apartment.
The two suspects were arrested on a warrant from French anti-terrorist Judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere. Since early November, Bruguiere has been seeking out members of a support network that may have provided false documents to the assassins of Massood, the charismatic guerrilla known as the ``Lion of Panjshir,'' who fought the Taliban.
Bruguiere has also placed Youssef el Aouni and Adel Tebourski, both Frenchmen of North African descent, under investigation for ``association with criminals in relation with a terrorist enterprise'' and falsification of documents. Both men had been arrested at the request of Belgian officials, who suspected them of forging passports. Massood's killers carried Belgian passports
Wednesday January 16, 3:29 PM
By Michael Speier
HOLLYWOOD (Variety) - While U.S. troops are fighting for their lives in Afghanistan, 24 macho men are playing games in USA's ``Combat Missions.''
Taking full advantage of America's war on terrorism, ``Survivor'' king Mark Burnett has tapped the nonfiction keg once more, coming up with an overtly patriotic series that would make Jerry Bruckheimer proud. Flag-waving aside, this hunk-laden endurance test comes off as an exercise in utter manipulation due to its arrival as the genuine article develops overseas. It shows just how unreal reality TV can be.
Idea is interesting enough -- and might have worked to greater effect if the U.S. wasn't pitching its tent in and around Kabul. The men gather at the Mojave desert's Camp Windstorm (specifically designed for ``Combat Missions'') and break up into four six-person lineups dubbed Alpha, Bravo, Charlie and Delta. Every week, two groups will battle for supremacy via military ops with names like Tank Take-Out, Fuel Dump Demolition, Urban Assault and Hostage Rescue. Using a training system called Miles 2000, all contenders trigger infrared lasers deployed from authentic weapons and vehicles.
At the end of each assignment, the losing squad (based on the activity's time elapsed and men ``lost'') will vote away a crew member. After 15 weeks, one man from one team is left standing, and he wins the majority of the $400,000 purse.
All of this is monitored by Rudy Boesch, the no-nonsense ex-Navy SEAL who almost took home Burnett's first ``Survivor'' crown and who has ridden his 15 minutes of fame to new heights. His presence here is surely one rooted in familiarity -- audiences who think about tuning out will almost surely stay glued when he's around -- but his one-dimensional hosting duties are almost irrelevant. Looking menacing and acting rigorous, his only job is to explain rules and oversee discharges.
The concept itself isn't so offensive, and neither are the participants; special forces are well represented, from the Green Berets to Marine Recons. They're all pros with egos, physically fit enough to stand their ground and defend their posts. Contestant reactions are too staged, however: An otherwise loyal collection of men sound rather silly -- especially during bona fide wartime -- spouting conflict wisdom such as ``I will not dishonor a man'' and ``Weak links must be destroyed.'' After all, they get to go home and watch CNN when this is over, while their counterparts are hunting Al Qaeda leaders in far-off caves.
Contributing to the lack of reality is the absence of a female presence. Except for two bartenders who work at the makeshift Snake Pit clubhouse, women are nonexistent, making it hard to see this as anything but an ultimate fantasy camp complete with blond hostesses.
The look, feel and sound of ``Combat Missions'' is highly charged. Blank shell casings are routinely released from ever-present gunfire, while explosions, simulated tear gas and faux grenades are all deployed. The no-frills camerawork and quick-cut editing is almost a given, considering Burnett's past projects, and patriotic marches are piped into almost every scene.
Base Commander .. Rudy Boesch
Videotaped in the Mojave desert by Mark Burnett Prods. Executive producers, Mark Burnett, Brian Gadinsky, David Russo; supervising producer, Craig Armstrong; co-supervising producer, Cord Keller; senior producer, Tim Powell; production designer, Steve Graziani.
Reuters/Variety REUTERS
Afghan warlord says he made deal with Mullah Omar
Wednesday January 16, 3:22 PM
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar was offered an amnesty to tempt him to lay down his arms, but he ditched the deal and gave his tribal enemies and their U.S. allies the slip, said the Afghan warlord who negotiated the agreement.
The deal, directed by Hamid Karzai, now the leader of Afghanistan's newly installed interim government, staved off a new round of fighting and a likely bloodbath in Kandahar's streets.
But it did not go quite according to plan, veteran guerrilla leader Mullah Naqibullah told Reuters in an interview.
"I sent a messenger to Omar's house -- it was about November 9 or 10 and just over a month after the Americans started their bombing -- to seek the surrender of his last stronghold in Kandahar," he said.
"The next day some 20-30 Taliban commanders came to see me. We negotiated all day, and I persuaded them they should give up their weapons, their ammunition and vehicles to me. In return they could save their lives, and that of Mullah Omar, and leave for their homes."
The commanders returned from Naqibullah's camp to Kandahar. After prolonged argument, Omar gave in, saying that if his commanders wanted to give up the struggle, he could no longer stand in their way.
But it was a trick, Naqibullah said, and it backfired.
"When I woke in the morning there were no Taliban and no weapons. I had called my fighters in... so we could collect the Taliban arms, drive into central Kandahar and then arrest Mullah Omar."
The deceiver had been deceived.
FLEEING IN THE NIGHT
Omar and his men had fled in the night, leaving arms, ammunition and vehicles behind.
Naqibullah, well over six feet tall, with a bushy beard and spectacles, is now the proud owner of Mullah Omar's white Toyota Landcruiser with tinted windows.
Naqibullah said he had acted with the full support of Karzai, who had entered Afghanistan and established himself at Showali Kot in Kandahar province to seek a negotiated surrender of the Taliban.
The fundamentalists imposed a puritanical dictatorship, ruling for six years and playing host to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network, blamed by the United States for the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.
Naqibullah, an influential figure in the Alikozai tribe and veteran of the war against Soviet-backed communist governments in Kabul, is popularly believed in Kandahar to have been a close supporter of the Taliban, and to have helped to fund its conquest of the country through income from smuggling.
NO BACKDOOR DEAL
He said he had met the reclusive Taliban leader only two or three times in all, and brushed aside any suggestion that he might have deliberately left Kandahar's back door ajar, giving the Taliban chief ample time to make good his escape.
He was close to Karzai, he said, and it was at Karzai's urging that he had surrendered his arms and ammunition to the Taliban in the early 1990s in the belief that the movement would bring order to a lawless southern Afghanistan.
"If you'd suggested to me then that Mullah Omar could have conquered the entire country, I would have dismissed it as impossible. He just didn't seem capable of it," he said, describing Omar as tall, thin, incoherent of speech and lacking in the usual Pashtun courtesies in addressing people.
Naqibullah said he and Karzai persuaded Taliban commanders to realise they had been defeated and that their only remaining bastion was Kandahar and there was no point in further resistance in the face of the U.S bombing and the opposition advance.
No direct contact was made with Mullah Omar during the negotiations. But there were telephone calls, messengers and face-to-face meetings with his representatives, and Naqibullah and Karzai kept in touch by satellite telephone.
Mullah Omar had been included in the offer that -- in return for the Taliban surrender -- their members could return home, their lives and liberty assured. The leader was included in the offer to try to induce the man believed to be the most diehard member of the Taliban to give up without bloodshed.
Naqibullah said that in his final session with the Taliban commanders he warned them that unless they complied with the offer by the next morning, he would order his forces to attack.
He said had no idea where Mullah Omar fled, or where he might be now.
Wednesday January 16, 2:50 PM
KABUL (Reuters) - U.S. relatives of victims of the September 11 attacks arrived in Afghanistan on Tuesday to meet Afghans who lost family in the U.S. bombing campaign.
Organisers hope the visit will help heal wounds and promote reconciliation between the two countries following the attacks and more than three months of a U.S.-led bombing campaign.
"It is a privilege to be here and share our experiences," said Derrill Bodley, a music professor from Stockton, California, whose daughter Deora died on the hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 when it crashed into a field in Pennsylvania.
"We have only just arrived, so we haven't really had the opportunity to do much, but I am aware this is something significant," he told reporters.
The trip has been organised by Global Exchange, an international non-governmental human rights organisation that aims to build people-to-people ties at grass roots levels.
Four Americans are visiting Afghanistan for three days on this exchange.
They also include Rita Lasar, 70, a retiree from New York who lost her brother Abe Zelmanowitz in the World Trade Center attack and Kelly Campbell, an environmental coordinator from Oakland, California, whose brother Craig Amundson was killed in the Pentagon attack.
Eva Rupp, Deora Bodley's step sister, was also among the group.
In Kabul, the group will visit several Afghan families whose lives were shattered after the September 11 attacks.
More than 3,000 people were killed when hijacked aircraft ploughed into the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon in Washington and in the Pennsylvania crash.
The United States launched its campaign in Afghanistan in October against the then ruling Taliban, accused of sheltering Saudi-born dissident Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network, which Washington blames for the attacks.
Although a full accounting of civilian deaths from the U.S. bombing in Afghanistan may never be known, human rights organisations estimate that between 2,000 and 4,000 Afghans may have been killed, Global Exchange said.
"Don't we, as citizens of a wealthy nation that unleashed deadly force against Afghanistan have a moral responsibility to help Afghanistan's innocent victims," said Medea Benjamin, a founding director of Global Exchange
Wednesday January 16, 12:01 PM
WASHINGTON, Jan 16 Asia Pulse - The reconstruction of Afghanistan is expected to cost about US$15 billion over the next decade, according to a preliminary needs assessment prepared jointly by the United Nations Development Programme, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank.
The document was shared with the international donor community today, a week before they are hosted by the Government of Japan in Tokyo to discuss the report and make their commitments to a new start for war-ravaged Afghanistan, a statement said. Japan forms the Steering Group for the Reconstruction of Afghanistan along with the European Union, Saudi Arabia and the United States.
"In the immediate months ahead, the Afghan administration will be under pressure to achieve quick results in its reconstruction efforts, meeting pressing needs in a way that gives the citizens a stake in peace and stability, and enhancing national integration," says the report. "This underlines the urgent need for up-front reconstruction activities and support from the international assistance community."
It is estimated that reconstruction will cost about $5 billion in the first two and a half years, the period spanning the current interim authority and the transitional government due to follow that in accordance with the Bonn Agreement. The 10-year figure for reconstruction costs has been put at $15 billion.
Part of the estimate for the first 30 months under Afghanistan's new arrangement will have to cover the country's recurrent costs as its authorities are unlikely to be able to collect taxes in the foreseeable future. It is estimated that the country will need about $1.8 billion to cover recurrent costs during this period, including the salaries of civil servants who lost their jobs during the Taliban era and who the interim authority plans to rehire. In earlier Afghan governments, about 43 percent of civil servants were women.
The document for discussion in Tokyo is a preliminary needs assessment, with further work on a more comprehensive needs assessment planned to take place in Afghanistan soon. The country's interim administration is expected to play a leadership role in drawing up the priorities for a reconstruction strategy based on the initial findings of the assessment. Senior officials in Kabul were consulted on the work done so far but time has been limited since the inauguration of the interim authority on December 22 last year. In addition, Afghan civil society has been consulted in an intense round of conferences and meetings since late November.
In the short term, the preliminary needs assessment expects these priorities to be focused on helping as many Afghans as possible reclaim their lives with access to health services, children - especially girls - going to school and adults returning to productive livelihoods, many of them in the fields and orchards. To this end, demining is expected to remain an important priority. There is a special focus in the report on a community-based approach to development and on the role of women in the reconstruction of Afghanistan, making space for them both in the economy and in the planning and decision-making processes.
Another clear priority is drug control. It is expected that as the benefits of peace, security and the beginning of development activities are demonstrated, refugees will return home in larger numbers.
The challenge of Afghanistan's development ranges from the reconstruction of infrastructure to the delivery of social services and the creation of an environment which allows the private sector to flourish productively
U.S. families arrive in Kabul to meet Afghan bereaved
Wednesday January 16, 11:01 AM
KABUL (Reuters) - U.S. relatives of victims of the September 11 attacks arrived in Afghanistan on Tuesday to meet Afghans who lost family in the U.S. bombing campaign.
Organisers hope the visit will help heal wounds and promote reconciliation between the two countries following the attacks and more than three months of a U.S.-led bombing campaign.
"It is a privilege to be here and share our experiences," said Derrill Bodley, a music professor from Stockton, California, whose daughter Deora died on the hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 when it crashed into a field in Pennsylvania.
"We have only just arrived, so we haven't really had the opportunity to do much, but I am aware this is something significant," he told reporters.
The trip has been organised by Global Exchange, an international non-governmental human rights organisation that aims to build people-to-people ties at grass roots levels.
Four Americans are visiting Afghanistan for three days on this exchange.
They also include Rita Lasar, 70, a retiree from New York who lost her brother Abe Zelmanowitz in the World Trade Center attack and Kelly Campbell, an environmental coordinator from Oakland, California, whose brother Craig Amundson was killed in the Pentagon attack.
Eva Rupp, Deora Bodley's step sister, was also among the group.
In Kabul, the group will visit several Afghan families whose lives were shattered after the September 11 attacks.
More than 3,000 people were killed when hijacked aircraft ploughed into the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon in Washington and in the Pennsylvania crash.
The United States launched its campaign in Afghanistan in October against the then ruling Taliban, accused of sheltering Saudi-born dissident Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network, which Washington blames for the attacks.
Although a full accounting of civilian deaths from the U.S. bombing in Afghanistan may never be known, human rights organisations estimate that between 2,000 and 4,000 Afghans may have been killed, Global Exchange said.
"Don't we, as citizens of a wealthy nation that unleashed deadly force against Afghanistan have a moral responsibility to help Afghanistan's innocent victims," said Medea Benjamin, a founding director of Global Exchange.
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