Carlotta Gall of the New York Times wrote yesterday, "Cellphone images seen by this reporter show at least 11 dead children, some apparently with blast and concussion injuries, among some 30 to 40 bodies laid out in the village mosque." A cellphone video seen by Gall "showed two lines of about 20 bodies each laid out in the mosque, with the sounds of loud sobbing and villagers' cries in the background."
The Times article also noted that "Villagers questioned separately identified relatives in the graves; their names matched the accounts given by elders of the village of those who died in each of eight bomb-damaged houses and where they were buried."
"The United States military," the article added, "in a series of statements about the operation, has accused the villagers of spreading Taliban propaganda. Speaking on condition that their names not be used, some military officials have suggested that the villagers fabricated such evidence as grave sites--and, by implication, that other investigators had been duped. But many villagers have connections to the Afghan police, NATO or the Americans through reconstruction projects, and they say they oppose the Taliban."
But the residents of Azizabad insist that no Taliban were present in the village.
While the Pentagon insists that their primary target in the attack, a Taliban commander named Mullah Sadiq, a man claiming to be Sadiq called Radio Liberty several days later to announce that he was alive and well. Reporters at the radio station said they were sure the man was not an imposter.
The UK paper The Times also reported yesterday on an exclusive video it had obtained: "As the doctor walks between rows of bodies, people lift funeral shrouds to reveal the faces of children and babies, some with severe head injuries. Women are heard wailing in the background. 'Oh God, this is just a child,' shouts one villager. Another cries: 'My mother, my mother.' The grainy video eight-minute footage, seen exclusively by The Times, is the most compelling evidence to emerge of what may be the biggest loss of civilian life during the Afghanistan war."
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