Expecting Taliban, but Finding Only Horror

AKRAK, Afghanistan, July 6 — After an American plane bombarded this village on July 1, American and Afghan soldiers surrounded the settlement and advanced at first light, searching houses and detaining people, apparently expecting to find Islamic militants, residents said today.

But as the soldiers neared the center of the cluster of mud-walled farmhouses, they found a horrifying scene, survivors said.

Women and children lay dead and wounded in and around one big house where they had been gathered for an engagement party, torn apart by cannon fire from the American attack plane, an AC-130 gunship. Survivors said they were gathering up the bodies, picking up limbs and body parts from the streets and adjoining orchard, and carrying the wounded to the village mosque, when the soldiers arrived.

What began as a major operation involving 300 to 400 American and Afghan soldiers against suspected Qaeda and Taliban positions in this isolated corner of southern Afghanistan had apparently turned into a slaughter of innocents. An Afghan delegation says the attack killed 48 people, mostly women and children, and injured 117, figures that American commanders said they accepted.