A NATO airstrike killed eight civilians in the southern Afghan province of Helmand, a district police chief said yesterday, adding to the toll for this year which is already the deadliest ever for civilians in the decade-long war.
The airstrike happened at about 3pm on Friday in the Nad Ali District of Helmand after insurgents attacked troops from the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in the area, Nad Ali District police chief Shidi Khan said.
Violence is at its worst in Afghanistan since US-backed Afghan forces toppled the Taliban government in late 2001, with high levels of foreign troop deaths and record civilian casualties during the first six months of this year.
Civilian casualties caused by NATO-led troops hunting Taliban fighters and other insurgents have long been a major source of friction between Kabul and its Western backers.
The victims on Friday were from one family that had recently fled fighting in neighboring Uruzghan Province, Khan said.
ISAF confirmed an airstrike was carried out after a coalition patrol came under attack.
“Shortly after the engagement, coalition forces received reports that civilians were being held captive by the insurgents and may have been present during the airstrike,” an ISAF spokesman said.
He said a team of coalition members had met with local leaders and ISAF was assessing the incident.
A gradual transition of security control to Afghan forces began last month with when areas were handed over by the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force. Afghan forces are scheduled to take full control across the country by the end of 2014.
The most contentious of the first seven areas to be handed over was Helmand provincial capital Lashkar Gah.
Helmand Province has been the site of some of the most vicious fighting of the war. Far more foreign troops have died there than in any other province and there are still several Helmand districts dominated by the Taliban.
In the past month insurgents have carried out a string of assassinations of high-profile southern leaders, including Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s younger half-brother and several large attacks killing police and civilians.
The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan said that the first six months of this year had been the deadliest period for civilians since the Taliban was toppled by US-backed Afghan forces in late 2001.
It said 1,462 civilians have been killed in conflict-related incidents, up 15 percent on the first half of last year. It blamed insurgents for 80 percent of those deaths.
Meanwhile, thirty-one US special forces and seven local troops were killed when the Taliban shot down a helicopter, officials said yesterday, in what was the deadliest single incident for foreign soldiers since the war began in 2001.
The Chinook helicopter was downed late on Friday during an anti-Taliban operation in the eastern province of Wardak.
Although Western and Afghan officials said they were still trying to assess exactly what had happened, an eyewitness claimed the chopper was struck during a firefight.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the incident, saying it had shot the helicopter down.
The death toll was given in a statement issued by Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s office and was not immediately confirmed by the ISAF.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema