Afghanistan’s president has ordered a probe into a rocket attack which his office said yesterday killed an unspecified number of people, as leaked documents laid bare the civilian toll of the US-led war.
The attack took place on a village in the Sangin area of Helmand Province on Friday, Siddiq Siddiqi, a spokesman for Afghan President Hamid Karzai, said.
An unspecified number of Afghan civilians, including women and children, were killed in the attack, he said.
“The attack took place, but we don’t have more information. That will be clarified by the National Security Council [NSC], which is investigating the incident,” he said.
The NSC investigation follows reports that up to 40 civilians were killed in a rocket attack on a village in Sangin, a Taliban hotspot that coalition forces have struggled to bring under control.
Siddiqi could not verify whether troops from NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) were involved in the attack.
ISAF spokesman Colonel Wayne Shanks said the location of the reported civilian deaths, a village called Regey, was “several kilometers away from where we had engaged enemy fighters.”
ISAF forces fought a battle with insurgents, he said, but an investigation team dispatched after the casualty reports emerged “had accounted for all the rounds that were shot at the enemy,” Shanks said.
“We found no evidence of civilian casualties,” he said, adding that the district medical examiner had told ISAF investigators “there were no casualties.”
Karzai was “deeply saddened” at the loss of life and “instructed the national security advisor to thoroughly investigate the causes of this incident and to present its findings very soon to the presidency,” his office said.
The BBC said it sent an Afghan reporter to Regey to interview residents, who described the attack and said they buried 39 people.
Civilian casualties are an incendiary topic among Afghan officials and citizens, though most are caused by Taliban attacks, surveys have shown.
In the past year, civilian casualties in the nine-year war have dropped significantly thanks to policies introduced by NATO commanders aimed at minimizing collateral damage in operations against the insurgents.
Nevertheless, deaths and injuries still appear to be regular occurrences, and convince Afghans that the source of violence in the country is the presence of almost 150,000 US and NATO troops fighting the insurgency.
Reports surfaced on Saturday that a helicopter gunship had fired on villagers who had been told by the insurgents to leave their homes as a firefight with ISAF forces was imminent.
According to early witness accounts, nearby villagers fled to Regey and were fired on from helicopter gunships as they took cover.
The most recent incident of civilian deaths at the hands of NATO forces was on July 10, when six Afghans were shot dead by ISAF troops in Paktia Province, south of Kabul.
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