Afghans: US bombs kill 22 road workers
By AMIR SHAH, Associated Press Writer 7 minutes ago
U.S.-led coalition troops killed 22 road construction workers in airstrikes in eastern Afghanistan after receiving faulty intelligence, Afghan officials said Wednesday.
The coalition said only that it was looking into the incident.
The engineers and laborers had been building a road for the U.S. military in mountainous Nuristan province, and were sleeping in two tents in the remote area when they were killed Monday night, said Sayed Noorullah Jalili, director of the Kabul-based road construction company Amerifa. There were no survivors, he said.
"All of our poor workers have been killed," Jalili said. "I don't think the Americans were targeting our people. I'm sure it's the enemy of the Afghans who gave the Americans this wrong information."
The company has requested that the U.S. military investigate the source of its information, Jalili said.
Nuristan Gov. Tamim Nuristani said the coalition conducted airstrikes after receiving reports that "the enemy" was in the area, and hit the road construction workers as they were sleeping. Afghan officials often refer to the Taliban and other militants as "the enemy."
Jalili said the workers were from four nearby provinces, and that all but three of the bodies had been returned to their homes.
Earlier this year, foreign troops came under scathing criticism for conducting airstrikes based on poor intelligence and causing a number of civilian casualties.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai pleaded repeatedly with NATO and coalition troops to cooperate closely with their Afghan counterparts to prevent civilian deaths, and the number of such incidents has dropped significantly in the past few months.
This has been the deadliest year yet for Afghanistan since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001, with more than 6,000 people killed in militant attacks and military operations, according to an AP tally of figures from Afghan and western officials.
Amerifa, an 11-year-old company, received the contract to build the road for the U.S. military last year, Jalili said.
U.S. troops kill at least 5 Iraqi civilians
BAGHDAD -- A child was among at least five Iraqis killed when U.S. soldiers opened fire in two incidents in central Iraq during a span of 24 hours, while police said a suicide bomber posing as a shepherd killed up to 13 people Tuesday outside a police station in the eastern province of Diyala.
The shootings involved vehicles that the soldiers perceived as threatening.
Three women and a man were killed while riding a minibus to work in the northeastern Baghdad neighborhood of Shaab, an Interior Ministry official said.
Abu Ahmed, a 45-year-old bank employee injured in the shooting, said he and his colleagues were riding the minibus from their homes to work in the morning when the incident occurred. Abu Ahmed said he woke up in the hospital, not knowing what had happened. He had been knocked unconscious but not shot.
A U.S. military spokesman said soldiers opened fire when the vehicle turned onto a road that had been closed to all traffic but family cars after tips of threats the Americans had received. The soldiers opened fire when "the driver failed to heed a warning shot."
The military said initial reports indicated that two Iraqis were killed and four wounded in the incident. The discrepancy between the death tolls cited by U.S. and Iraqi officials could not be immediately resolved.
Separately, U.S. soldiers shot at a car speeding through a roadblock north of Baghdad on Monday during an offensive against the militant group Al Qaeda in Iraq, the military said in a statement. One child and two men were killed in the incident near Baiji, 125 miles from the capital, the statement said.
"The ground force fired warning shots, but the driver attempted to speed through the roadblock. Perceiving hostile intent, the ground force engaged, killing both men," the statement said.
The child was found wounded in the back seat and rushed to a military medical station, where he died, it added.
"We regret that civilians are hurt or killed while coalition forces work diligently to rid this country of the terrorist networks that threaten the security of Iraq and our forces," said U.S. Navy Cmdr. Ed Buclatin.
In a further incident, Iraq's Interior Ministry reported that U.S. soldiers opened fire Tuesday evening near the Ibn Hayan bridge in Tobji in northwest Baghdad, killing two civilians and wounding six others. However, the U.S. military had no immediate confirmation of the incident.
The spate of shootings came after the U.S. and Iraqi governments signed a declaration of principles Monday committing them to reaching an agreement by the end of next year on America's long-term security role in Iraq, including the status of U.S. forces. Iraqis regularly complain of cases in which U.S. troops have accidentally killed civilians during their operations. However, the U.S. military says it has reduced the number of incidents in recent months as violence has dropped in Baghdad.
"This study helps reverse that thinking," said Heather Trim, of the environmental group People for Puget Sound. "All of us driving around in our cars and all the things we are doing in our homes and our business are all contributing to this problem."
U.S. troops kill at least 5 Iraqi civilians
BAGHDAD -- A child was among at least five Iraqis killed when U.S. soldiers opened fire in two incidents in central Iraq during a span of 24 hours, while police said a suicide bomber posing as a shepherd killed up to 13 people Tuesday outside a police station in the eastern province of Diyala.
The shootings involved vehicles that the soldiers perceived as threatening.
Three women and a man were killed while riding a minibus to work in the northeastern Baghdad neighborhood of Shaab, an Interior Ministry official said.
Abu Ahmed, a 45-year-old bank employee injured in the shooting, said he and his colleagues were riding the minibus from their homes to work in the morning when the incident occurred. Abu Ahmed said he woke up in the hospital, not knowing what had happened. He had been knocked unconscious but not shot.
A U.S. military spokesman said soldiers opened fire when the vehicle turned onto a road that had been closed to all traffic but family cars after tips of threats the Americans had received. The soldiers opened fire when "the driver failed to heed a warning shot."
The military said initial reports indicated that two Iraqis were killed and four wounded in the incident. The discrepancy between the death tolls cited by U.S. and Iraqi officials could not be immediately resolved.
Separately, U.S. soldiers shot at a car speeding through a roadblock north of Baghdad on Monday during an offensive against the militant group Al Qaeda in Iraq, the military said in a statement. One child and two men were killed in the incident near Baiji, 125 miles from the capital, the statement said.
"The ground force fired warning shots, but the driver attempted to speed through the roadblock. Perceiving hostile intent, the ground force engaged, killing both men," the statement said.
The child was found wounded in the back seat and rushed to a military medical station, where he died, it added.
"We regret that civilians are hurt or killed while coalition forces work diligently to rid this country of the terrorist networks that threaten the security of Iraq and our forces," said U.S. Navy Cmdr. Ed Buclatin.
In a further incident, Iraq's Interior Ministry reported that U.S. soldiers opened fire Tuesday evening near the Ibn Hayan bridge in Tobji in northwest Baghdad, killing two civilians and wounding six others. However, the U.S. military had no immediate confirmation of the incident.
The spate of shootings came after the U.S. and Iraqi governments signed a declaration of principles Monday committing them to reaching an agreement by the end of next year on America's long-term security role in Iraq, including the status of U.S. forces. Iraqis regularly complain of cases in which U.S. troops have accidentally killed civilians during their operations. However, the U.S. military says it has reduced the number of incidents in recent months as violence has dropped in Baghdad.
Stormwater's damage to Puget Sound huge, report says
By Warren Cornwall
Seattle Times environment reporter
Seattle Times environment reporter
Every year, Puget Sound suffers an oil spill equal to more than half an Exxon Valdez. It just happens drop by drop.
Stormwater from roads, parking lots and elsewhere carries between 6.3 million and 8 million gallons of petroleum into the Sound every year, according to a report issued Friday by the state Department of Ecology. The 1989 Valdez accident in Alaska dumped 11 million gallons.
And the flow into Puget Sound dwarfs the amount of oil that comes from accidental spills, which add up to 270,000 to 340,000 gallons each year.
The findings of the new report underscore a long-standing problem of stormwater pollution as a push to clean up Puget Sound gets under way. It also shows the difficulty of corralling contamination that comes from the region's pavement and storm drains, instead of pipes from a handful of factories.
"Certainly, when you look at the diffuse nature and the complexity of runoff ... yeah, it will make the challenge greater," said Josh Baldi, a special assistant for Puget Sound with the Ecology Department.
Oil is just one in a list of well-known contaminants winding up in the Sound. Others include heavy metals such as lead and mercury, along with pesticides, potentially toxic flame retardants and PCBs, the industrial chemical banned in the 1970s.
While runoff is the biggest single source, toxic chemicals also waft through the air before winding up in the Sound, especially hydrocarbons from car and truck exhaust, and woodstoves, among other sources. And the report may underestimate the amount of toxic chemicals coming from factories and wastewater plants, partly because they don't routinely test for some of the chemicals, Baldi said.
The study comes as the newly created Puget Sound Partnership, a state agency, crafts a plan to clean up the Sound by 2020. The new report is meant to give policymakers ideas about where the biggest problems are and what approaches might work best.
Granted, the steady trickle of oil doesn't have the dramatic impacts of an oil spill such as the Valdez, or the Nov. 7 spill in San Francisco Bay that coated beaches. But scientists have found that even tiny amounts of hydrocarbons in oil can cause long-lasting harm to fish.
After the Valdez spill, researchers discovered that herring and pink salmon that had been exposed as embryos to traces of oil developed curved spines, unusually small jaws and small eyes.
Now, researchers at the federal Northwest Fisheries Science Center, headquartered in Seattle, have found that hydrocarbons can hurt the hearts of developing herring embryos in laboratory experiments, said John Incardona, a research toxicologist there. That can prove fatal. He is now studying whether even lower levels of the chemicals cause problems such as heart defects that affect the fish's ability to thrive.
The Ecology study did not look at other forms of runoff pollution that aren't toxic chemicals, such as bacteria that force closures of shellfish farms and can sicken people, and nutrients that can cause algae blooms.
The latest findings run counter to public perceptions, according to recent polls, that Puget Sound is being sickened chiefly by pollution from industry.
"This study helps reverse that thinking," said Heather Trim, of the environmental group People for Puget Sound. "All of us driving around in our cars and all the things we are doing in our homes and our business are all contributing to this problem."
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