User:Geo Swan/Guantanamo/other articles that aren't ready yet/US 2001 aerial bombardment of Afghanistan

Hundreds of al-Qaeda fighters are believed to have crossed into Pakistan after their camps and hideouts in the Tora Bora region of the White Mountain range were targeted in heavy US bombing raids and ground attacks by Afghan forces. Mr Rumsfeld said air bombardments in Afghanistan had now virtually ceased.

But one of his first jobs has been to investigate reports that US aircraft killed civilians when they bombed a convoy in eastern Afghanistan last week. According to the Reuters news agency, Mr Karzai met a survivor of the convoy attack on Monday. Survivor Haji Wazir Mangal gave Mr Karzai his account of the bombing, but the leader's spokesman, Ustad Stanikzai, could not provide details of their discussion. The US military continues to maintain that the convoy was a "valid" Taleban or al-Qaeda target that opened fire on its warplanes. But survivors and witnesses saying that it was carrying tribal elders to Kabul for Mr Karzai's swearing-in as the new Afghan leader. Mr Stanikzai speculated that the convoy may have been hit because of incorrect information passed to the Americans by a local group hostile to the elders. But the Reuters report said that the very fact that Mr Karzai met a survivor would indicate that his supporters were in the convoy, rather than Taleban or al-Qaeda members. Local tribal leader Gulab Din has threatened to launch a war against the new Afghan administration if US warplanes carry out further attacks on targets in his area of Paktia province, according to the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press.