A NATO airstrike in southern Afghanistan early yesterday killed 25 civilians, including nine women and three young children, police said amid rising concern about civilian casualties.
NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) confirmed its troops called in air support after being attacked in Helmand Province and said it was investigating reports of a "small number" of civilian casualties.
Provincial police chief Colonel Mohammad Hassan said the bombing came after Taliban fighters attacked an ISAF convoy from among houses and gardens in a village.
About 20 Taliban were also reported killed in the strike after midnight, he said.
"The NATO forces' airstrike on the area mistakenly targeted two to three civilian houses, killing 25 civilians," Hassan said.
The dead included nine women and three children aged from six months to two years old, he said.
The rest were men, including the mullah of the mosque of the village about 14km north of Lashkar Gah Town.
The information that 20 Taliban were killed had come from "reports we get from the area and from the locals," he said. "The militants seem to have taken the Taliban bodies with them."
ISAF said the target of the strike was a compound "assessed to have been occupied by up to 30 insurgent fighters, most of whom were killed in the engagement."
It had not yet been possible to determine if civilians had been killed or injured or if any casualties were the result of insurgent or ISAF action, it said in a statement.
One ISAF soldier was wounded in the engagement, spokesman Major John Thomas said.
Meanwhile, a Dutch military chief said yesterday that Taliban fighters executed Afghan civilians, including women, who refused to join them during a recent fierce battle against NATO and Afghan government forces in the south.
Citing "solid reports" from Afghan police, General Dick Berlijn said Dutch and Afghan forces, supported by Dutch and US airstrikes, fended off an attempt by about 500 Taliban fighters to overrun the southern town of Chora last weekend.
During the attack, Taliban fighters tried to force local civilians to fight alongside them, "and killed citizens who refused -- they were hauled out of their houses by the Taliban and executed," Berlijn told reporters.
"One police checkpoint commander saw two brothers murdered before his eyes by the Taliban," Berlijn said.
Another police report "said that eight women were murdered -- they had their throats slashed," he said.
Berlijn said reports suggested that between 30 and 70 enemy fighters were killed in the fighting that started on June 15 and raged for several days.
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