The US-led coalition in Afghanistan announced yesterday an investigation into government allegations that troops had killed 76 people, mostly children, in air strikes against Taliban rebels.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai condemned Friday’s incident in the western province of Herat in a statement that expressed exasperation about a series of events in which civilians have died in anti-militant operations.
The coalition on Friday said only 30 militants were killed in an engagement with Taliban rebels in the western district of Shindand, which it said started when Afghan and coalition troops were ambushed.
They returned fire and called in air strikes, it said.
But police in the area said 15 houses were destroyed in the air strikes, resulting in a much higher death toll.
“Seventy-six people, all civilians and most of them women and children, were martyred,” the ministry said in a statement.
The dead were “19 women, seven men and the rest children all under 15 years of age,” it said.
If the death toll is confirmed it would be one of the highest for civilians in the battle to fight the extremist Taliban, who were ousted during a US-led invasion in 2001.
The coalition said it would investigate.
“All allegations of civilian casualties are taken very seriously,” the coalition said in a statement from the main US military base in Afghanistan at Bagram, north of Kabul. “Coalition forces make every effort to prevent the injury or loss of innocent lives. An investigation has been directed.”
It was difficult to independently verify what had happened as Shindand is a dangerous area. Locals had said on Friday that around 55 civilians were dead but the defense ministry said only five were killed.
US officials say US and Afghan soldiers investigated the site of the bombing afterward and know the exact number of militants killed.
“Obviously there’s allegations and a disconnect here. The sooner we can get that cleared up and get it official, the better off we’ll all be,” US coalition spokesman 1st Lieutenant Nathan Perry said.
The Interior Ministry’s claim also contradicted the Afghan Ministry of Defense’s version of the battle. Defense Ministry spokesman General Mohammad Zahir Azimi said 25 militants and five civilians were killed in the attack.
The conflicting reports highlight the difficulty in establishing facts in the mounting clashes between troops and rebels.
The interior ministry said it had sent a delegation to the area to probe the deaths.
In a statement condemning the event, Karzai accused the troops of acting without coordinating with local authorities and “martyring at least 70 people, most of them women and children.”
The statement said “all efforts by the government to seek the prevention of civilian casualties have not yet brought a fruitful conclusion and our civilians are victims of anti-terrorist operations.”
The government would come up with a plan to curtail such incidents and would soon announce details, he said.
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