Associated Press

Residents look at the damage caused by U.S.-British airstrikes in Kabul, Afghanistan yesterday. The United States hit Afghanistan and key installations of the Taliban regime with cruise missiles for the second night for harboring suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden. Four Afghan U.N. workers were reported killed hours earlier Monday night during one of the U.S. raids on Kabul.

Wednesday October 10, 2001

KABUL, Afghanistan - In the rubble of what had been an unassuming two story building on Kabul's outskirts, Mohammed Afzl wept yesterday for his brother - one of the first four confirmed civilian casualties of the U.S.-led air war against the Taliban and Osama bin Laden.

"My brother is buried under there," he said, watching bulldozers clear the remains of the offices of a U.N.-funded mine-clearing agency where the victims worked as guards.

The building in a quiet district of vegetable fields on the edge of the capital was less than 400 yards away from anti-aircraft batteries and a communication tower struck in U.S. raids Monday night. In Washington, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said it was not clear whether the building was hit by a U.S. missile or by anti-aircraft fire.

"What can we do?" Afzl said, still crying as he recounted how he had begged his brother to spend the night with family instead of guarding the empty building. "Our lives are ruined."

Last night, American warplanes were back in the skies, pounding areas around the Taliban headquarters of Kandahar for the second time in 12 hours and the northwestern city of Herat. Planes screeched over the capital, sparking thunderous anti-aircraft fire and sending residents huddling back into whatever shelter they could find. Gunners opened fire again after midnight with a series of rapid salvos at high-flying jets.

"We just sit in the dark, watching the sky, waiting to die," said vegetable vendor Jamal Uddin, shutting down his shop as the lights went out last night. Power was cut in the city, and Taliban radio has been off the air since the second round of strikes wrecked transmitters.

There was no immediate strike in or near Kabul yesterday. The planes may have been headed toward Rishkore, nine miles to the west, a known training camp of bin Laden's al-Qaida terror network.

Officials from the Taliban, the Islamic militia that rules Afghanistan, claimed yesterday that dozens of people have died in the U.S.-led raids. But the four workers, whose bodies were recovered yesterday, were the first civilian deaths to be independently confirmed.

The men were employed by Afghan Technical Consultants, an agency contracted by the United Nations to conduct mine clearing - a never-ending task in one of the world's most heavily mined countries.

Their offices were not far from a transmission tower knocked out in Monday's strikes and near anti-aircraft batteries and an ammunition storage sites that may also have been U.S. targets.

Stephanie Bunker, a U.N. spokeswoman, confirmed the deaths. She said the men hadn't been told to leave the building. But, she said, "we specifically instructed staff that if they feel endangered, they should abandon their duty situations."

The United Nations evacuated international staff from Afghanistan at the outset of the crisis, but Afghan nationals working for U.N. organizations or groups under U.N. contract remained behind. The mine-clearing agency said last week it had suspended operations.

Bunker appealed for protection of civilians. "People need to distinguish between combatants and those innocent civilians who do not bear arms."

At the Pentagon, Rumsfeld expressed regret over the deaths, but said it was not verified that the U.S. fire was to blame. "We have no information that would let us know whether it was a result of ordnance fired from the air or the ordnance that we've seen fired from the ground on television," he said.

Rumsfeld said three days of airstrikes against facilities of the al-Qaida terror network and the Taliban's military had done enough damage to allow U.S. planes to fly day and night - a sign of U.S. confidence the flights were safe from air defenses.