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CNN Live Saturday

Pentagon Acknowledges U.S. Bomb Killed Civilians in Afghanistan

Aired October 13, 2001 - 17:13   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JOHN KING, CNN ANCHOR: We want to turn now to Kathleen Koch standing by for us at the Pentagon, the Pentagon acknowledging today that one of its bombs went awry killing civilians in Afghanistan. Kathleen joins us now with the latest -- Kathleen.

KATHLEEN KOCH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: John, the aircraft that launched that errant missile was a U.S. Navy F-18 Hornet launched from one of two U.S. aircraft carriers based in the Arabian Sea.

Those F-18's have seen a lot of use in the air over Afghanistan since the campaign began, the one that flies at over 1,100 miles per hour, drops a variety of missiles and bombs. The F-18 is the first tactical aircraft designed to carry out both air-to-air and air-to- ground missions. That's why you often hear it referred to as a fighter-bomber.

In this case the weapon of choice when that military helicopter was apparently spotted near the Kabul Airport was a 2,000 pound joint direct attack munitions or JDAM.

JDAM's are known to be very, very precise weaponry. They were used first in 1999 in the NATO bombing campaign over the former Yugoslavia. It's got a short range, only about 15 miles, guided by some 14 to 17 global positioning satellites, as well as inertial navigation systems in its tail. And what the JDAM does is convert existing free-falling bombs into smart weapons that, at least, in their developmental stage were seen to be 95 percent accurate.

Now, the Pentagon is blaming this mishap on a targeting process error. The targets can either be keyed into the JDAM in advance or over the flight by the aircraft crew itself, so in this case it could have been that the JDAM didn't miss its target but perhaps the wrong coordinates were keyed in. John.

KING: Kathleen Koch at the Pentagon. Thank you very much. Collateral damage, that is the term the Pentagon uses when a bomb goes astray and civilians are killed or unintended targets struck.

For more on that and the military campaign on Day 7, we turn it over now to CNN's Donna Kelley in Atlanta.

DONNA KELLEY, CNN ANCHOR: OK, John thanks very much. Our CNN military analyst General Wesley Clark is with us from New York today. General Clark, we're glad you could join us to visit with us a little bit more about the collateral damage.

What we want to start with is we got a hold of a satellite photo of the area, of the airport and the neighborhood. This is about a year old. It comes from space imaging. We'll take a look at that, and we'll be able to show you what the neighborhood looked like before, of course, the campaign started seven days ago. I'm having a little trouble bringing that up, but we're trying to get that right now.

In the meantime, let's talk about what has happened today. Apparently, of course, this target was a helicopter at the airport a mile off. Pentagon says that it could have been a targeting process error.

Here we go. We're zooming in. This is what the airport looked like before and you are able to see, if you look toward the top part of your screen, then you can see that we have planes there on the tarmac. So, you're able to see what it looked like before these strikes happened.

The incident today, let's take a look at that in the fly over, the animation that we put together for you there, if we have that available. The intended target of course was the helicopter at this airport that we're showing before the campaign started seven days ago. It was off by a mile. Is a mile quite a bit for a smart weapon, general?

GEN. WESLEY CLARK (RET), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Well absolutely, smart weapons don't miss by a mile. Something has to go wrong in terms of putting in the coordinates or there has to be a weapons malfunction of some type for it to misfire, something like that.

KELLEY: The Pentagon says that perhaps it's a targeting process error. What does that say to you?

CLARK: It sounds to me like somebody has the coordinates in the bomb wrong. They could have been put in on the ship. They could have been put in in the cockpit and somehow maybe a digit was transposed or just a slip of the finger.

KELLEY: Yes, Pentagon says that they take great care to avoid collateral damage. What is done to avoid collateral damage?

CLARK: Well, at every step of identifying a target, extra precautions have been put in there in recent years because we know the extreme risk of what it means to harm innocent civilians, and basically the Pentagon is doing, and the military is doing everything it can to avoid having this happen.

So, first very careful identification of what the target is, wherever the source of the information is, it's double-checked to make sure the locations are right.

It's balanced against a no strike list of areas that we wouldn't want to hit, to make sure that it doesn't fall within that. The type of weapon to be used is the smallest possible weapon to do the damage that's required.

We look at all the structures around the target to make sure that the blast effects, the fragmentation from the weapon won't damage those structures, and then it's passed through the chain of command down to the actual crew that flies the mission.

KELLEY: Here's our animation that we were showing what happened today.

CLARK: Here it is.

KELLEY: Yes, the plane comes in, the Navy fighter jet comes in and it's aiming for the helicopter at the airport, and there the intended target you can see, but then we don't know what direction of that mile, somewhere that mile around in there, it's off by one mile. North, East, South, West we don't know, but one mile from around the airport it was off.

You know, with smart weapons now, has that helped in collateral damage? Do you have a comparison or a tracking there?

CLARK: Before we had smart weapons, you couldn't really track collateral damage because when you dropped bombs, they could be off almost every time by anywhere from two feet to 2,000 feet. And, during World War II when all bombs were dumb bombs, you missed by a half mile a lot. That's why they had to use a lot of weapons.

With smart weapons, you only use one weapon per target and 95 percent of the time they go right in, but there are malfunctions and there are occasionally human errors and that's just unavoidable.

KELLEY: That fact of war.

CLARK: It is.

KELLEY: CNN Military Analyst General Wesley Clark, thanks very much. Leon.

LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: All right, thank you, Donna. We're going to talk about all of this a little bit more coming up. More coverage when we come back after break.

The Taliban takes reporters on a tour of the war-torn region, plus compelling pictures of some of the damage done since the U.S. strikes began. All that just ahead, don't go away.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARRIS: The Pentagon says it regrets the loss of civilian lives in Afghanistan. As you may know, a U.S. Navy jet mistakenly bombed a civilian neighborhood near Kabul. Two of our reporters are out there checking out the reaction and the latest military moves in Afghanistan.

We begin with CNN's Christiane Amanpour. CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I'm Christiane Amanpour in Islamabad. The Pentagon says that one of its Navy bombers misfired and a bomb went astray, hitting a civilian area on the outskirts of the Kabul Airport.

We have been showing pictures of what is the aftermath of that attack. There is rubble that we can clearly see. There are people standing and looking at the rubble, and this is what the Pentagon and reports on the ground say led to between one to four deaths and perhaps as many as eight injuries.

The local hospital in Kabul shows people with bandages on their heads. One young boy, who apparently is in a coma because of shrapnel wounds, and also people with burn wounds.

Kabul residents say they are very afraid. Many of those, those who can, are trying to flee the city with whatever belongings they can muster, putting them in boxes and in busses, leaving on foot, on bicycle and in whatever vehicles they can gather and go away with. Back to you.

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm Matthew Chance in Northern Afghanistan. We've been witnessing a renewed bombardment from Northern Alliance positions along the front line, across that front line toward Taliban front lines.

No indication though at this point of Northern Alliance forces pushing ahead, penetrating deeper into Taliban-controlled territory, no indication that they are yet moving on the Afghan capitol Kabul.

Elsewhere, across Afghanistan though, there have been renewed reports of fighting, especially in the north around the strategic city of Mazar-e Sharif. There have been conflicting reports too about which side exactly controls which territory.

For instance, the Taliban and the Northern Alliance have said this week that they control the northern province of Ghowr. The problem is we're not able to confirm those reports. We're not able to get to those very remote locations and see for ourselves and independently verify exactly what's going on. Matthew Chance, CNN, in Northern Afghanistan.

HARRIS: CNN's Nic Robertson is also moving through Afghanistan. He's been part of a group of journalists who've been escorted through some Taliban-controlled areas by the Taliban.

These are areas that we have not been able to get firsthand access to, and this journey that Nic and his compadres are on is expected to last two or three days or so. They're going to be going to Quetta, Pakistan and then from there to a site near Jalalabad, Afghanistan.

Nic joins us now live via phone to give us the latest in all this -- Nic.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well Leon, we're in Jalalabad now. It was some 50-mile drive from the border. We came in several hours ago. Since we've been in Jalalabad, there have been several bombs fall here, one in the center of the city quite close to our location, rattling the windows, one further on the outskirts.

It's impossible to say exactly where they're falling, but the real reason the Taliban are bringing us into the city at this time is because they say three villages close to the city were devastated, blasted by bombs they say in the last couple of days. They say there were many civilian casualties, even deaths in that.

What the Taliban essentially are trying to do now is deliver a picture to the world of their view of what they say is happening inside Afghanistan and that that is they're under attack, but they say that many civilians and innocent people are being, how they say, being targeted by those attacks.

Now, so far since we've been inside Afghanistan, it's been dark. We've been able to see very little, obviously hear the bombs falling, see some debris on the outskirts of town close to the airport and a military base.

But, in terms of verifying these claims of injured civilians, that has not happened yet. The Taliban do promise, however, to take us to hospitals, universities, and to these villages in daylight. Leon.

HARRIS: Well quickly, Nic, can you tell us whether or not you are actually going to be given access to everything, or are they just basically not going to let you go freely, or can you at least choose which sites you want to go to while you're in there?

ROBERTSON: Definitely not. The Taliban have made it clear that we should remain with their officials at all times, and it's their intention to show us the sites that are of interest to them.

There are other sites that are off limits. Military sites will likely be off limits, and this is a trip on the Taliban terms. However, it is a first. They have kept out international journalists up to now, and it does give an insight into actually what's happening in the countryside.

The streets are empty and it is possible to see where other bombs have been falling, other than those they would like us to see. Leon.

HARRIS: And of course, it's going to be impossible to tell whether or not those sites where you've been seeing some damage may actually have been military and not civilian. Nic Robertson, thank you very much. Be careful and we look forward to talking with you throughout this trip.

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