The US-led coalition, Afghan government and UN will launch a probe into last month’s raid in a western Afghanistan village where some Afghan officials say 90 civilians were killed, a top NATO official said.
The US-led coalition maintains that 25 militants and five civilians died in their operation on Aug. 22 in the village of Azizabad in western Herat Province.
Evidence from all sides regarding the raid has been scant, with no conclusive photos or video emerging to shed light on what happened in Azizabad. But the claim of 90 civilian deaths by the Afghan government and UN has caused new friction between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his Western supporters.
US Brigadier General Richard Blanchette, the chief spokesman for the NATO-led force, said on Saturday that the Afghan government, US-led coalition and the UN mission have agreed to a joint probe.
“We are hoping to have a quick unfolding of this investigation so we can ... basically reconcile these numbers which are way too far apart right now,” Blanchette told said in a telephone interview.
“It is obviously a case where all three have received different bits of information, and they need to reconcile this,” he said. “Obviously, there is somebody that does not have the right information.”
Dan McNorton, a spokesman for the UN mission in Afghanistan, said details of the investigation were still to be worked out.
Afghan government officials were not immediately available for comment.
Karzai has castigated Western military commanders over civilian deaths resulting from their raids. The Taliban and other insurgents use the deaths as leverage to turn Afghans away from the government, he says.
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