From a human rights point of view, what happened was outrageous.

Leslie Oqvist UN regional coordinator in southern Afghanistan

The highway airstrikes caused an unknown number of civilian deaths and occurred between mid-November and mid- December. The strikes occurred along an arc in the southern half of Afghanistan, from Herat in the west to Qalat in the east, as well as southern roads leading from Iran and Pakistan, UN officials said in interviews.

The Pentagon has said it bombed fuel tankers and trucks believed to be supplying the Taliban prior to the takeover of Kandahar on Dec. 7. It has said that the strikes were not aimed at civilian trucks and tankers.

But, according to the UN account and three drivers interviewed, bombing over two days in November also included the targeting of cars.

The strikes continued well beyond the time the Taliban was routed from the area, UN officials said. One driver of a fuel tanker was part of a three-vehicle convoy attacked north of Kandahar in Qalat on Dec. 17, 10 days after the Taliban fled the city.

''From a human rights point of view, what happened was outrageous,'' said Leslie Oqvist, the UN regional coordinator in southern Afghanistan.

''But I've been in meetings here where'' Americans ''have justified everything on the 3,000-plus killed in New York.''

A Pentagon spokesman, asked about the targeting of cars and the risks to civilians, called the highway campaign a legitimate part of the war effort, and nothing that warrants further investigation.

''I don't think there has been anything from our standpoint to relook at it, unless a formal complaint was raised,'' Sergeant Major Richard Czizik, a US Central Command spokesman, said yesterday. ''Every effort is made to protect the lives of noncombatants, but in every military operation there is always the possibility of civilians getting killed.''

All told, some 160 Afghan fuel tankers and trucks were destroyed in those two November days, along with the 210 cars, according to UN officials. In some cases, the drivers and passengers were allowed - or even urged - by US forces to step back from their vehicles before the vehicles were destroyed. In other cases, the strikes claimed civilian lives, said the UN officials.

Although not formally investigating the attacks, UN offices in Kandahar gathered accounts from representatives of Afghan unions of truck and tanker drivers, as well as from its Afghan staff at several locations and local staff of other international nongovernmental organizations.

On the destruction of cars, Sadequlla, Oqvist's deputy in Kandahar, said yesterday, ''It included some civilian cars and some opposition cars, but almost all of them were civilian cars.

''I personally think it must have been almost impossible to identify whether it was a civilian car or whether it belonged to the opposition. They are the same colors, same brand,'' said Sadequlla, who like many Afghans uses one name.

In the Afghan road strikes, drivers and company owners cited several instances in which one or two people died, but no full accounting has been made by the UN or any other agency. Local authorities, who advanced with the Americans on Kandahar, show no inclination to investigate.

The issue of Afghan innocents dying from American bombing has taken on new resonance in recent weeks as evidence emerges of a larger death toll than previously reported.

A Globe on-the-ground survey of 14 sites, and a review of scores of others, found the toll almost certainly surpassed 1,000 dead. That account, which was published Sunday, does not include any deaths from the November road attacks.

Since then, witnesses and survivors have scattered. In addition, international human rights groups have chosen not to launch a comprehensive investigation of civilian casualties in Afghanistan because they consider many areas unsafe.

In the first day of strikes, 120 fuel tankers and trucks were destroyed, said Sadequlla. Forty more were destroyed the following day, he said.

Although some fuel trucks may have been supplying the Taliban, Sadequlla said, the vast majority of trucks were civilian. ''Some people managed to hide in their [tankers] and trucks,'' he said. ''But US helicopters landed in the roads, dropped off soldiers, and they got drivers out of the cars. Then they fired missiles at the vehicles.''

In a Washington Post account published on Nov. 23, two truckers said US special forces pulled six sleeping truckers out of their vehicles and two helicopters then fired missiles at their tankers.

Abdul Hakeem, manager of Asadat Co., which owns fuel tankers, said he ordered all his trucks off the road once the attacks began. He said he knew of 12 tankers destroyed between Kandahar and Qalat. In one case, he said, two people died. In another, a car carrying seven members of a family in Urozgan province was hit, killing all seven, he said. He heard about the deaths through relatives of the victims.

''In that time, we thought the Americans were going to kill all Afghans just like in the time of the Russians, when they said they would kill all of the people,'' Hakeem said, sitting cross-legged in his office as he sipped green tea with a roomful of his truckers. ''People here were saying that the Americans are trying to kill 4,000 to 5,000, to equal the number killed in their country.''

Hakeem said he hid six of his trucks under trees in Kandahar.

Yusuf Pashtoon, a top aide to Kandahar Governor Gul Agha Shirzai, said he was unaware of the effort to destroy all trucks and tankers during that time. ''We knew that some of the Taliban were using these fuel tankers,'' he said.

After the strikes, which continued intermittently through December, the area suffered a shortage of essential goods. A UN internal report on Dec. 5 on the Kandahar region cited the ''severe scarcity of fuel, water, and food since no [or little] basic commodities are entering the city due to American bombing of most large civilian [as well as noncivilian] commodity trucks and public transportations to/from the city.''

But the strikes weren't limited to tankers and trucks on the main roads. Adbul Salam said he was driving a small bus carrying four passengers near the village of Shahwali Kot on Dec. 4 when a bomb landed only 15 feet from his vehicle. He and the passengers jumped out of the vehicle, he said, and 10 minutes later a warplane blew it up.

He said he later heard that Hamid Karzai, now head of Afghanistan's interim government, asked for US warplanes to bomb any vehicles headed toward Shahwali Kot. Karzai's troops, aided by US special forces, were preparing to defend the village and then mount an offensive on Kandahar.

A witness confirmed that the strikes continued after the fall of the Taliban.

Abdul Kareem, 25, a fuel tanker driver, said he was in a three-vehicle convoy headed toward Qalat on Dec. 17 when a warplane dropped a bomb on the first tanker, which exploded. The second vehicle caught fire, and Kareem pulled his hand brake and crashed through the windshield, he said. The plane then hit his truck, although it did not explode.

Kareem spoke from his bed in Mirwais Hospital in Kandahar, where he has been treated with skin grafts on both legs.

After the aircraft bombed the convoy, he watched from a ditch as an AC-130 gunship strafed the vehicles, he said. ''It made three passes,'' he said.

The attack ''was not a mistake,'' Kareem said. ''They saw us. They knew we had nothing to do with Al Qaeda. They even saw the people and shot at them and didn't allow them to run away. They knew we were civilians.''

© Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company

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