Early investigations into civilian casualties in clashes and US-led strikes in Afghanistan have found claims of a toll of approximately 100 dead are “grossly exaggerated,” the US military said yesterday.
US military and Afghan defense and interior ministry teams returned from the area in the western province of Farah early yesterday and were still going through their findings, Colonel Greg Julian said.
They had expected to release a report on their joint investigation yesterday but this may be pushed back to today to include results of a separate probe appointed by Afghan President Hamid Karzai, he said.
Julian refused to comment on reports from Washington citing US officials saying investigations had found that US troops were responsible for the deaths of villagers in the air strikes.
“There were civilian casualties no doubt,” he said. “But the conclusion from the investigation has not been reached, and it’s inappropriate to indicate one way or the other how they were caused.”
One of the issues being looked into was whether the Taliban had caused the civilian casualties by throwing grenades among villagers, he said.
Afghan police have said that more than 100 people were killed, about 25 to 30 of them insurgents and the remainder civilians, including elderly people and children.
A member of the Farah council, Abdul Basir Khair Khowa, said he had been to the area and was told by locals that 147 civilians were killed.
Some local media reports have cited villagers claiming up to 170 civilians died.
“All parties agreed that the high numbers that have been stated previously are grossly exaggerated,” Julian said, adding that this included the Afghan police figure of 100.
The clashes from Monday to Tuesday were focused on two villages in the Bala Buluk district, a dangerous area where Taliban have a strong presence making it difficult for journalists to travel to the area.
Meanwhile, the death toll for Afghans killed in a suicide attack that apparently targeted foreign forces in southern Afghanistan rose to 21 yesterday, while a foreign soldier was killed in a blast in the same area, officials said.
NATO’s International Security Assistance Force said one of its soldiers was killed in a blast on Thursday, but could not immediately confirm if it was the same suicide attack that killed civilians.
The attack was carried out in a busy bazaar in Helmand province’s Girishk district.
“Twenty-one people are dead and 22 wounded,” Helmand government spokesman Daud Ahmadi said.
All the dead were civilians and some were children, but it was not yet established how many, he said. Two policemen were among the wounded.
ISAF said in a statement its soldier “was killed as a result of an improvised explosive device strike yesterday.” It gave no details, including the nationality of the soldier, and its media office was not able to release more information.
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
RIGHTS FEARS: A protester said Beijing would use the embassy to catch and send Hong Kongers to China, while a lawmaker said Chinese agents had threatened Britons Hundreds of demonstrators on Saturday protested at a site earmarked for Beijing’s controversial new embassy in London over human rights and security concerns. The new embassy — if approved by the British government — would be the “biggest Chinese embassy in Europe,” one lawmaker said earlier. Protester Iona Boswell, a 40-year-old social worker, said there was “no need for a mega embassy here” and that she believed it would be used to facilitate the “harassment of dissidents.” China has for several years been trying to relocate its embassy, currently in the British capital’s upmarket Marylebone district, to the sprawling historic site in the
‘IMPOSSIBLE’: The authors of the study, which was published in an environment journal, said that the findings appeared grim, but that honesty is necessary for change Holding long-term global warming to 2°C — the fallback target of the Paris climate accord — is now “impossible,” according to a new analysis published by leading scientists. Led by renowned climatologist James Hansen, the paper appears in the journal Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development and concludes that Earth’s climate is more sensitive to rising greenhouse gas emissions than previously thought. Compounding the crisis, Hansen and colleagues argued, is a recent decline in sunlight-blocking aerosol pollution from the shipping industry, which had been mitigating some of the warming. An ambitious climate change scenario outlined by the UN’s climate
A deluge of disinformation about a virus called hMPV is stoking anti-China sentiment across Asia and spurring unfounded concerns of renewed lockdowns, despite experts dismissing comparisons with the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago. Agence France-Presse’s fact-checkers have debunked a slew of social media posts about the usually non-fatal respiratory disease human metapneumovirus after cases rose in China. Many of these posts claimed that people were dying and that a national emergency had been declared. Garnering tens of thousands of views, some posts recycled old footage from China’s draconian lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, which originated in the country in late