Airstrikes

KABUL, Afghanistan -- NATO forces said yesterday that they were investigating reports that 25 Afghan civilians were killed in overnight airstrikes in southern Afghanistan. The mounting civilian casualty toll in Afghanistan is eroding public support for the Western-backed government of President Hamid Karzai. After the report of the latest deaths, Karzai told the BBC that accidental killings and injuries of civilians at the hands of coalition forces are "difficult for us to accept or understand."

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - An Israeli missile strike in the Gaza Strip killed a top Hamas political and military leader yesterday, along with several relatives, as the militant group continued to launch its rockets deep into Israeli territory. The continued clash came amid rising global calls for an end to the bloodshed, which has killed at least 418 Palestinians and four Israelis. The attack on Nizar Rayan, confirmed by Israeli officials, family members and Hamas, might signal a shift in Israeli tactics as the assault on the Gaza Strip entered its sixth day. After nearly a week of pounding police stations, security compounds, rocket-launching cells and cross-border tunnels, the Jewish state might be reviving its former practice of assassination strikes on Hamas leaders.

WASHINGTON -- Political vitriol, barely contained since last year's impeachment vote, erupted anew in the House yesterday in the wake of votes Wednesday that sent a message of growing alarm in Congress over the course of the Kosovo conflict. The finger-pointing and partisan divisions resulting from the House votes -- particularly the refusal to endorse the NATO air campaign -- raise questions about Congress' ability to work with President Clinton in directing the U.S. involvement in the conflict and in paying for it. House Democratic leader Richard A. Gephardt blamed "right-wing extremists" for orchestrating what he called "a low moment in foreign policy and the history of this institution."

JERUSALEM - After four days of airstrikes that have partially crippled Hamas, Israel signaled interest yesterday in a proposed 48-hour suspension of its offensive in the Gaza Strip to test the prospects for a full cease-fire with the militant Palestinian group. The proposal, offered by France on behalf of the European Union, came as Israel's air force appeared to be running short of bombing targets and losing the advantage of surprise it achieved early in the offensive that began Saturday.

WASHINGTON - Daily airstrikes by U.S. and allied fighter-bombers in Afghanistan have almost doubled since last summer, according to U.S. Air Force data, a trend that reflects increased insurgent attacks but also raises concerns about civilian casualties. The growing reliance on airstrikes by U.S. commanders in Afghanistan appears to mark a turn in the course of the war. Responding to requests from ground commanders, allied aircraft over the past week have pummeled enemy ground targets an average of 68 times a day across Afghanistan, dropping 500- and 2,000-pound guided bombs and strafing enemy forces with cannon fire, according to Air Force daily strike reports.

LONDON -- Bob Dole, expected to become Senate majority leader, left here yesterday after making some conciliatory sounds but clinging to positions that anger the British: his desire to press airstrikes against Bosnian Serbs and lift the arms embargo for the Bosnian Muslims.Both stands run counter to British views, United Nations policy and the Clinton administration's latest thinking. Mr. Dole did try to reassure the British, up to a point. "There isn't any rift between me and the prime minister," he said at dusk outside No. 10 Downing St. after an hourlong meeting with Prime Minister John Major.

WASHINGTON -- After the bombing, then what?NATO officials hope that once cruise missiles and bombs "degrade" the Yugoslav army, President Slobodan Milosevic will see the error of his judgment and agree to the Western-drafted peace plan that he has rejected for weeks.That would open the way for the entry of 28,000 peacekeepers, including 4,000 Americans, to enforce the agreement, protect civilians and ensure an autonomous -- but not independent -- Serbian province of Kosovo.No one can guarantee this outcome, and the Clinton administration has said little about what might follow bombing if Milosevic persists in his refusal to accept a plan that includes NATO forces on Serbian soil.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan - The first four confirmed civilian deaths since the start of U.S. airstrikes on Afghanistan were employees of a United Nations mine-clearing project - men working for an agency dedicated to removing the deadly aftermath of earlier wars who became victims of the latest one. "We have lost 30 workers in the last decade on minefields, but this is the first time we have lost people in the office. This is the tragedy of war," said a sad and weary-looking Syed Ahmad Farid Elmi, acting director of Afghan Technical Consultants, or ATC. A twist making the deaths even more painful, friends said, is that the tower 200 yards away that is believed to have been the U.S. target was not a Taliban transmission facility but a defunct radio broadcasting station.

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia -- Never underestimate the ability of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to turn an international crisis to his domestic advantage.With his country on the brink of NATO airstrikes to end the standoff in the Serbian province of Kosovo, Milosevic and his supporters have moved to quash dissent in the past week even more so than normally.They have closed independent radio stations, outlawed the rebroadcast of foreign news, ordered newspapers to withhold publishing "defeatist" articles and even threatened to ban some political parties in the event of airstrikes.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- In what has become a dolefully familiar event, local Afghan officials reported yesterday that at least 30 civilians, and perhaps a great many more, were killed during U.S.-led coalition airstrikes, this time in the Gereshk district of the southern province of Helmand, where dozens of civilians died under similar circumstances the previous week. Contacted by telephone, the mayor of Gereshk, Dor Ali Shah, and tribal elders said that the allied bombardment began late Friday and extended into yesterday, coming soon after insurgents had attacked coalition ground forces.

JERUSALEM - Waves of Israeli airstrikes on security compounds in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip killed at least 225 people yesterday, sending tremors through the Middle East and inflaming the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at a time of transition in Washington. The start of what could be an open-ended campaign marked the deadliest day of fighting in Gaza in decades, coming after militants in the coastal territory had stepped up attacks on Israel, firing scores of rockets and mortar rounds after the expiration of a shaky truce.

KABUL, Afghanistan - A NATO airstrike yesterday on a village near the embattled provincial capital of Lashkar Gah killed 25 to 30 civilians, Afghan officials in the area said. While NATO confirmed that an airstrike had taken place in the area, where Taliban fighters have been battling NATO forces, it said the reports were being investigated and the command was "unable to confirm any civilian casualties." Reliable information on the airstrike - whether it caused the deaths, as local officials and residents reported, and whether the number of civilian deaths was accurate - was elusive.

KABUL, Afghanistan - Taliban fighters made an unusual bid to capture a provincial capital, Afghan and Western officials said yesterday, a failed assault that underscored their heightened boldness in recent months. Hundreds of Taliban militants took part in the multipronged attack that began late Saturday against Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province, where British troops maintain a regional garrison. NATO-led forces carried out airstrikes to stave off the assault, which left more than 60 insurgents dead in fighting that continued into early yesterday, according to Afghan and Western military officials.

AZIZABAD, Afghanistan: To the villagers here, there is no doubt what happened in an American airstrike on Aug. 22: More than 90 civilians, the majority of them women and children, were killed. The Afghan government, human rights and intelligence officials, independent witnesses and a U.N. investigation back up their account, pointing to dozens of freshly dug graves, lists of the dead, and cell-phone videos and other images showing bodies of women and children laid out in the village mosque.

KABUL, Afghanistan - A U.S. military investigation concluded yesterday that only five to seven civilians and 30 to 35 Taliban were killed in an airstrike operation in western Afghanistan last month, far fewer than the 90 civilians that the Afghan government and the United Nations found in their preliminary investigations. Two civilians were also wounded, the U.S. command said in a statement. The military investigation was a standard internal one and comes ahead of a joint investigation it has agreed to conduct with the United Nations and the Afghan government to try to reconcile the vastly differing accounts of what happened early Aug. 22 in the village of Azizabad and how many people died.

WASHINGTON - Daily airstrikes by U.S. and allied fighter-bombers in Afghanistan have almost doubled since last summer, according to U.S. Air Force data, a trend that reflects increased insurgent attacks but also raises concerns about civilian casualties. The growing reliance on airstrikes by U.S. commanders in Afghanistan appears to mark a turn in the course of the war. Responding to requests from ground commanders, allied aircraft over the past week have pummeled enemy ground targets an average of 68 times a day across Afghanistan, dropping 500- and 2,000-pound guided bombs and strafing enemy forces with cannon fire, according to Air Force daily strike reports.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- President Saddam Hussein appeared in a nationwide television broadcast yesterday and urged his nation to resist the "evil" American forces, while Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz gave notice that international weapons inspectors would not be allowed back into the country if economic sanctions remain in force.Lifting of the sanctions, first imposed by the United Nations after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990, has since been dependent on proof that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction had been destroyed.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. fighter jets pummeled insurgent fortifications and weapons caches in Fallujah with five airstrikes over a nine-hour span, the U.S. military said yesterday, as Marines and Iraqi security forces readied a major offensive. With the U.S. military completing preparations, Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said yesterday that "the window ... is closing" for negotiating a peaceful settlement with Fallujah's Sunni tribal leaders. Speaking to reporters in Brussels, Belgium, after meeting with European leaders, Allawi issued a warning.

BAGHDAD -- As U.S. forces plunged deeper into the bloody showdown between Iraqi security forces and Shiite militiamen, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki extended a deadline yesterday for fighters to disarm after nobody responded to his first one. The United States military said a Navy jet had strafed a mortar-launching position in the southern city of Basra with 20-mm cannon fire Thursday night, killing three "criminal militia members." It was the first time U.S. forces had been directly involved in the combat in Basra since al-Maliki launched an offensive against militias there on Tuesday.

JERUSALEM -- An Israeli airstrike killed two members of the Hamas military wing in the northern Gaza Strip early yesterday, and two Qassam rockets fired by militants from Gaza landed in the Israeli border town of Sderot and a nearby village, causing no casualties. The Israeli army said that another airstrike was aimed at a vehicle carrying weapons in northern Gaza early yesterday, with no casualties reported, and that a small ground force entered Gaza and arrested four armed Hamas militants, taking them to Israel for questioning.