Rumsfeld dismisses claims of 200 dead

The Taliban's claim that American strikes on a village in Afghanistan resulted in hundreds of civilian casualties was "ridiculous", the US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, said yesterday.

Taliban officials said US warplanes may have killed as many as 200 people in Khorum village in eastern Afghanistan.

Pentagon officials said US forces had targeted caves and hit two tunnels in the area that were believed to store ammunition. Mr Rumsfeld said: "They were not cooking cookies inside those tunnels."

He said people in the area were probably connected to the activities in the tunnels. "You do not spend that kind of money and dig that far in and store that many weapons and munitions that it would cause that kind of sustained secondary explosions, unless you have very serious purposes for doing it," Mr Rumsfeld said.

"Most of the Taliban activity has been shepherding journalists around to things they claim caused civilian damage. We do not have information that validates any of that," Mr Rumsfeld said. "Indeed, some of the numbers are ridiculous."

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers, also denied the Taliban claim. He said: "There are no bomb craters on that village, and furthermore intelligence tells us from our photographs that the village was not heavily occupied, if at all, during that strike."