The commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan took his apology for a weekend airstrike that killed civilians directly to the Afghan people yesterday, with a video in which he pledged to work to regain their trust.
In the video, translated into the Afghan languages of Dari and Pashto on a NATO Web site, a stern General Stanley McChrystal apologized for the strike in central Uruzgan Province that Afghan officials say killed at least 21 people.
Sunday’s attack by NATO jets on a convoy of cars was the deadliest attack on civilians in six months and prompted a sharp rebuke from the Afghan government. It comes as NATO is struggling to win public backing for a major military offensive against the Taliban in the south with a strategy that involves taking all precautions possible to protect civilians.
The civilian deaths occurred as 15,000 NATO, US and Afghan soldiers were in their 10th day of fighting insurgents in the southern town of Marjah in Helmand Province. The mission is to rout the Taliban, set up a local government and rush in aid to win public support.
An explosion yesterday morning in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand Province, left three people dead and at least 11 others wounded, police said. Police chief General Asadullah Sherzad said explosives in a parked motorbike were detonated in front of the traffic department.
The alliance said its planes fired on what was thought to be a group of insurgents in Uruzgan Province on their way to attack NATO and Afghan forces. Interior Ministry spokesman Zemeri Bashary said the airstrike hit three minibuses.
McChrystal apologized directly to Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Sunday shortly after the incident and the video is another sign of the military coalition’s intense public relations campaign.
Although the airstrike was not related to the Marjah offensive, civilian casualties undermine NATO’s goal of turning back the Taliban and winning the confidence of the Afghan people — one of the main objectives of the southern operation.
Meanwhile, the number of US soldiers who have died in the Afghan war has reached 1,000, Web site icasualties.org said on Monday, a grim milestone in the conflict launched more than eight years ago.
The independent Web site, which tracks military deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq, said 54 US soldiers have died in the war so far this year, compared with a toll of 316 last year — the worst since the US-led invasion of 2001.
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