Scores of civilians died in last week’s NATO air strike on Taliban insurgents in northern Afghanistan, a prominent domestic rights group said yesterday in a first independent estimate of the death toll.
Afghanistan Rights Monitor (ARM), a non-governmental group funded by domestic rights campaigners, said in a report based on more than a dozen interviews with local residents that between 60 and 70 civilians died in the strike in the Char Dara district of Kunduz Province on Friday.
“Preliminary reports received by ... ARM indicated [that between ] 60 [and] 70 non-combatants died,” said the Kabul-based group.
“Even if all the victims were supporters of the Taliban the fact that most of them were unarmed and were not engaged in any combat activity does not warrant their mass killing,” it said.
The Friday incident was the first in which Western forces were accused of killing large numbers of civilians since US Army General Stanley McChrystal took command of foreign forces in June announcing protecting Afghans was the centerpiece of a new strategy.
NATO has yet to finish its investigation into the incident, but acknowledged some civilians may have been killed.
ARM said in a statement that more than a dozen armed men also died in the incident when a US F-15 fighter jet called in by German troops struck two hijacked fuel trucks.
Afghan officials say scores of people were killed, including civilians, but the government has not offered any estimates. The NATO strike was condemned by several European officials at a meeting of European foreign ministers in Stockholm.
Provincial authorities have given conflicting figures. A lawmaker from Kunduz on Sunday put civilian deaths at 65.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has said it is difficult to estimate the exact death toll because many bodies were believed to have been incinerated.
German Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung defended his troops on Sunday for calling in the air strike and warned against hasty judgments over the most deadly operation involving German forces since World War II.
“The air strike was absolutely necessary,” Jung told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper. “I can’t comprehend how some can so quickly criticize the military action without knowing what the situation was or the background information.”
“Based on the information I got, only Taliban terrorists were killed in the strike,” he said.
The Taliban have become increasingly active in Kunduz, a region bordering Tajikistan which has been traditionally calm — a worrying sign for US-led troops trying to turn the tide in their war against an increasingly aggressive insurgency.
Meanwhile, a Swedish charity accused US troops yesterday of storming through a hospital in central Afghanistan, breaking down doors and tying up staff in a search for militants. The US military said it was investigating.
The Swedish Committee for Afghanistan said the US Army’s 10th Mountain Division entered the charity’s hospital without permission to look for insurgents in Wardak Province, southwest of Kabul, according to the charity’s country director, Anders Fange.
“This is simply not acceptable,” he said.
The US troops came to the hospital looking for Taliban insurgents late at night on Wednesday, Fange said. He said they kicked in doors, tied up four hospital employees and two family members of patients, and forced patients out of beds during their search.
When they left two hours later, the unit ordered hospital staff to inform coalition forces if any wounded militants were admitted, and the military would decide if they could be treated, Fange said.
The staff refused, he said.
“That would put our staff at risk and make the hospital a target,” he said.
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