KABUL: At least 60 people have been killed in a suspected US air raid in Kunduz province, northern Afghanistan, the governor of the province said.Two petrol lorries were hit by the air attack, government sources told an Arab TV on Friday, but a Taliban spokesman said only one abandoned lorry was hit, killing 90 civilians.According to reports, members of the Taliban reportedly hijacked the lorries, travelling from Tajikistan, and took them to the district of Aliabad."The Taliban there said 'Help yourself' to the village, and a large crowd appeared," Bays said."It appears that then the US then launched a bombing mission to bomb those trucks.""Afghan intelligence sources said that a very large number of people had been killed, and the governor of Kunduz province said many of the dead were Taliban."A Taliban spokesman confirmed that the two lorries were hijacked, but that one got stuck in the mud in Aliabad district and was abandoned.The air attack hit the abandoned lorry, the spokesman said, killing 90 civilians who had come out to take the fuel.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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