Pentagon Defends Missile Strikes on Afghan Complex

Feb. 12, 2002 -- Under intense pressure from reports that the victims of a CIA missile attack in southeastern Afghanistan were innocent villagers, the Pentagon asserted that casualties in the attacks were not civilians.

"Initial indications would seem to say that these are not peasant people up there farming," Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem told reporters in Washington Monday during a grueling round of questioning about last week's missile strikes.

"The indicators were there that there was something untoward that we needed to make go away," he said.

A team of 50 U.S. investigators at the Zawar Kili complex gathered body parts as well as weapons, communications systems and documents in English including applications for credit cards and airline schedules, said Stufflebeem. Indications, he maintained, that "something untoward" was happening at the site.

A carrying case for an expensive satellite phone was also reportedly found at the site.

"There are no initial indications that these were innocent locals," he said. "And I base that on the fact that this team, in addition to just looking at the site where the strike occurred, also did some exploration in the surrounding area to include some caves, a nearby village and talking to locals. So I think that puts us in a comfort zone right now that these were not innocents."

Stufflebeem's comments followed a report in The Washington Post Monday that villagers in the area had provided the identities of some of the victims of the attack and told reporters they were locals collecting scrap material from the site.

A Washington Post reporter told ABCNEWS: "All of whom [the locals], to a person, identified the three victims of the attack as three local peasants who were collecting scrap metal ... and I've spoken to relatives of the three men today and all them say that's exactly what they were ... and they certainly were not Osama bin Laden and they were not al Qaeda."

The missile strike was conducted by an unmanned CIA Predator drone last Monday following intelligence reports that a group of people had gathered at the Zawar Kili complex, which had been the target of intense U.S. strikes in January.

Initial reports that one of the men killed was a "tall man" in white flowing reports had fueled speculation that one of the victims may have been bin Laden.

But Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said the identities of the victims had not been established and the evidence gathered by U.S. investigators who were at the site was currently being analyzed.

Clarke would not comment on the number of people killed in the missile strike.

A Shadow War

Exactly five months after the Sept. 11 attacks, reports of alleged U.S. mistakes in the military fight against al Qaeda and Taliban pockets of resistance have been growing in recent days.

The United States is currently investigating a Jan. 23 raid in the southern Afghan village of Kas Uruzgan during which some of the Afghans mistakenly detained were allegedly kicked and beaten by U.S. troops.

Twenty-seven Afghans were released last week after the United States acknowledged they were mistakenly detained. But four of the detained men told The New York Times and The Washington Post they were kicked, beaten and punched by U.S. troops.

Reacting to the reports, Clarke said: "We have nothing to indicate anything like that happened."

More than two months after the collapse of the hard-line Taliban regime in Afghanistan, Stufflebeem said identifying targets across the troubled Central Asian country was a difficult process. "It's a shadow war," he told reporters. "These are shadowy people who don't want to be found."

Putin Warns Against U.S. Attack on Iraq

In other developments:

Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned againstU.S. military action against Iraq. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Putin said the situation in the Persian Gulf region was different from Afghanistan and warned that unilateral U.S. military action in Iraq could ruin the international coalition against terrorism.

Interim Afghan leader Hamid Karzai again called for an increased international peacekeeping presence in Afghanistan. "Our people ask for an increased presence of international forces because they want to be sure of the commitment of the international community to peace and stability in Afghanistan," said Karzai during a visit to the United Arab Emirates on Monday.

Afghan authorities said Taliban Foreign Minister Mullah WakilAhmed Muttawakil, who is being held by the U.S. military after hissurrender last week, should be tried for alleged crimes committed during theTaliban rule in Afghanistan.

ABCNEWS' John McWethy and Brian Hartman at the Pentagon contributed to this report.