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Afghan official claims 16 killed in coalition strike

An Afghan provincial governor said yesterday that 16 civilians, including women, children and doctors, were killed in US-led coalition airstrikes but the force insisted the dead were militants.

The strikes were on Friday in the remote district of Waygal in the mountainous northeast province of Nuristan, about 50km from the border with Pakistan.

Provincial Governor Tamim Nuristani said 16 civilians were killed as they were traveling out of the area after being told by security forces to leave ahead of an operation against Islamic insurgents.

“They included two women, two children, workers and shopkeepers travelling in two pick-up vehicles,” Nuristani said.

Two doctors and a female nurse were also dead, he said.

But the coalition said on Friday and again yesterday the dead were militants, who were escaping after attacking a NATO-led military base in the rugged area.

“The insurgents then entered two vehicles and began traveling away from the firing position. Ground forces called coalition attack helicopters for support,” it said in a statement yesterday.

“The attack helicopters then destroyed the two vehicles, killing more than a dozen militants,” it said.

The coalition said it was aware of media allegations of civilian casualties and was “engaging with Afghan officials on this matter.”

There was some angry reaction in the province with the head of the government’s provincial council there, Rahmatullah Rashidi, warning the body would stop work if “such killings continue.”

In more violence on Friday, two unknown attackers shot dead a legislator and tribal leader, Habibullah Jan, as he was driving in his troubled home district of Zharai in Kandahar Province, authorities said.

The legislator, aged around 55, was also the head of Kandahar’s prominent Alizai tribe and a former commander of the 1979-1989 anti-Soviet resistance.

A spokesman for the Taliban, who are active in Zharai and have carried out several targeted killings, said it was not involved.

“This is not our work,” spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi said by telephone.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the UN representative strongly condemned the killing.

“The enemies of Afghanistan’s people, by killing another son of this land, have tried to silence the voice of the Afghan nation,” Karzai said in a statement.

“But they must understand that such brutal and anti-Islamic acts can never stop people reaching peace,” he said.

UN representative Kai Eide said the attack “underlines the risks faced by dedicated parliamentarians as they work tirelessly to forge a new future for the people of Afghanistan.”

Jan became the 10th member of the lower house to be killed since Afghanistan’s first democratically chosen parliament was elected in 2005, four years after the ouster of the Islamic Taliban regime in a US-led invasion.
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