Kandahar, Afghanistan — Sixteen U.S. soldiers were injured in a helicopter accident while on a combat mission in eastern Afghanistan, Army officials said Tuesday, the latest in a series of aviation mishaps that have claimed 11 American lives.
Meanwhile, a Red Cross official claimed that the U.S. military assured him three weeks ago that there would be no raid on a hospital where six al-Qaida gunmen were holed up. After a two-month siege, the gunmen were killed Monday by Afghan fighters backed by U.S. special forces.
Gianni Bacchetta, an administrator for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said that he had asked the special forces to give the Red Cross some warning if they were going to stage an attack.
The Red Cross had received none before an explosion rocked the compound of the Mir Wais Hospital, Bacchetta said.
"Just because you use a proxy, doesn't mean it lowers your level of responsibility," Bacchetta said.
Bacchetta doubted, however, that the Red Cross would file a protest because the gunmen were combatants. The agency, which is partly responsible for the hospital, pulled down its flag three weeks ago because the hospital had become a "combat zone."
"They were in the hospital, wounded, but they were armed, and subject to using the arms," Bacchetta said. The Red Cross has asked the Americans to turn over their bodies as the agency tries to trace their families.
The gunmen were believed to be from Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Algeria, Bacchetta said.
Maj. A.C. Roper, a spokesman at the U.S. military base at Kandahar, said that he had no information related to the hospital attack because it was a Special Forces operation.
The helicopter accident occurred when 24 members of the Army's 101st Airborne Division were landing at a Marine encampment Monday near the town of Khost, an area hit repeatedly by U.S. air strikes and troops targeting suspected training camps and arms caches used by Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network.
The injuries ranged from bruises to fractures. None were considered life threatening, Roper said.
There was no hostile fire involved, Roper said. The pilot of the CH-47 Chinook apparently failed to see holes in the ground at the landing site due to darkness and dust.
With only two Americans killed in combat, aviation accidents have proven the most lethal aspect of the Afghan campaign.
Seven Marines perished when a KC-130 refueling tanker crashed in Pakistan on Jan. 9, and two Marines died in a helicopter crash Jan. 20 in a resupply mission to special forces north of Kabul, the capital. Two Army Rangers were killed in an earlier chopper accident.
In Washington, visiting Afghan leader Hamid Karzai failed to win a promise from President George W. Bush that U.S. soldiers would join an international peacekeeping force, currently led by Britain, that many Afghans want deployed nationwide.
The force is confined to policing the capital, Kabul, and could face resistance if it moved into the provinces, where warlords hold sway.
Washington intends to keep troops in Afghanistan until at least mid-year to hunt remnants of al-Qaida, blamed for the Sept. 11 terror attacks, and the Taliban who harbored bin Laden's men.
The United States will support the security force and stands ready to help if its "troops get in trouble," Bush said. The U.S. will help train an Afghan military and police force to help the nation regain stability after 23 years of conflict.
A partnership was evident in Kandahar when the hospital was stormed. U.S. troops said the Afghans did the up-close fighting, hurling grenades through windows and firing automatic weapons and pistols into rooms where the gunmen fought to the last man.
Lali Saliki, an Afghan commander in the raid, said Americans trained the group of Afghans in the front wave.
Several Afghans were wounded, one seriously. There were no U.S. injuries, said Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem, deputy director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The Pentagon disputed claims that special forces mistakenly killed innocents during a nighttime raid last week on two compounds described as a munitions storage area in mountainous central Afghanistan. About 15 people were killed. An American was wounded in the ankle.
Stufflebeem said intelligence clues indicated that the compounds were used by al-Qaida or the Taliban. But, he said, interrogations of the 27 prisoners taken have not established their affiliations.
Afghans have said that those killed were loyal to Karzai and had negotiated the munitions _ hundreds of mortar rounds and grenades and a half-million rounds of ammunition _ away from the Taliban. They say no Taliban or al-Qaida fighters were there.
Karzai said the claims will be investigated.
In other developments:
CBS News reported that bin Laden was spirited to a military hospital in Pakistan for kidney dialysis the night before Sept. 11. The network quoted government officials as denying the allegation. A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the United States has seen nothing to substantiate the report. Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf has said that he believes bin Laden has kidney disease and may have died from it.
Police in Kabul cracked down Tuesday on vehicles with dark-tinted windows that can hide weapons and conceal fleeing criminals. Checkpoints were set up around the city and police used a tool to peel off the tinting.
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