US: President Bush phoned the Afghan President, Mr Hamid Karzai, yesterday to express his "deep sadness" at the killing last Monday of innocent people during a US bombing raid on the central province of Uruzgan, according to Kabul Radio.
Meanwhile, the governor of Uruzgan said he wanted the US military to hand over the "informer" who told it to bomb villages in his province killing 46 civilians.
"If they don't submit the informer to us, then they are our enemy," Mr Jaan Mohammed said from the remote, mountainous region. "The Americans for sure know who this person is. We know him too, but we don't want to reveal his name."
The US military has said it had received reliable information from several sources that senior Taliban leaders were sheltering in a remote Uruzgan village close to Deh Rawud, near the birthplace of fugitive Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar.
Afghanistan says the raid by bombers and helicopter gunships killed 46 civilians, at least 22 of them while they were attending a wedding party, but a US investigating team, which has been in the area since Wednesday, says it has so far only seen five graves.
"I hope such kind of accidents will not happen again," Mr Bush was quoted as saying. "The United States is a powerful friend of Afghanistan and will be beside Afghanistan."
The state radio said Mr Bush expressed his sympathy with the mourning families and looked forward to the results of a joint Afghan-US inquiry.
The investigation team is expected to return Kabul today. A separate UN assessment team is also expected back in the capital after inspecting damage to irrigation, wells, bridges and roads in the region, where the Foreign Minister, Abdullah Abdullah, said four villages were bombed.
A special forces team went in to "cordon and search" the village, but called in air strikes after seeing anti-aircraft fire coming from the area directed at coalition warplanes, the US military spokesman, Col Roger King, said yesterday. They had detained several suspected Taliban or al-Qaeda militants during the operation.
Mr Karzai said on Thursday the US argument that it dropped the bombs after its aircraft came under enemy fire was unacceptable. Villagers insisted that in line with tradition, they fired only rifle shots during the wedding ceremony.
The incident has become a public relations nightmare for the United States.
Women in burqas protested against the killings outside the UN offices in Kabul on Thursday.In Tripoli, Libyan mosques devoted prayer services yesterday to the memory of the 46 civilians reportedly killed in Uruzgan. Prayer leaders called the bombing a "massacre" and an "affront to humanity" and urged Muslims to "stand up to the infidels," an apparent reference to the United States.
They also denounced the silence of Arab and Muslim countries in the aftermath of the air strike. - (Reuters, AFP)