Each time the old woman breathed out you could hear a small groan of pain as she sat, her head in one hand, her other shoulder shattered by shrapnel and fixed in a coarse plaster.
Her son Mohammad and his wife Khwara sat next to her - they were mourning the death of their 18-year-old son and her brother. Both were among 57 killed - almost half of them women and children - when American forces bombed their village in Shindand, western Afghanistan, and destroyed 100 homes.
"The bombardments were going on day and night," said Mohammad Zarif Achakzai, who had to flee their mud house in the Zerkoh Valley. "Those who tried to get out somewhere safe were being bombed. They didn't care if it was women, children or old men."
Khwara explained how it started: "Americans came to the village without consulting any elders," she said. "They just came into to the women's part of the house, so we women went to the elders, and we told them if you don't stop this, we women will stand against them." "Death to the America that killed my son," she shouted.
Bombardments
The US special forces were in the valley looking for an arms cache. Shindand is not under Taleban control, but intelligence reports suggest some locals may have been gun-running for them.
Even under the Russians we haven't witnessed bombardments like it before, said Baryaly Noorzai. Baryaly Noorzai was knocked out by a bomb, while he and his wife and child were fleeing their home. The village elders were angered by culturally insensitive house searches. And there have been a large number of civilians killed recently - more than 70 in three months according to the AIHRC commissioner, Nader Naderi.
Abridged version of report by Alastair Leithead
BBC News, Afghanistan
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