Foreign forces opened fire on a bus in southern Afghanistan yesterday, killing four civilians and wounding 18, a provincial official said.
The issue of civilian casualties caused by international forces is an emotive one in Afghanistan and undermines support for their presence in the country. It has also created a rift between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the West.
“A foreign military convoy fired on a passenger bus and killed four civilians and wounded 18 more,” said Zalmai Ayoubi, spokesman for the governor of Kandahar Province.
The incident took place in Zhari District, to the west of Kandahar City, Ayoubi said. The bus had been traveling along the country’s main ring road from Kandahar to Herat City in the west.
A spokesman for NATO-led forces said he was aware of an incident involving civilian casualties in Kandahar yesterday and that a joint Afghan-NATO assessment team had been sent to the area. He did not have any more details on the incident.
The latest incident comes less than a week after NATO said it had launched an investigation into whether its forces had killed four civilians — two women, a child and an elderly man — in an air strike in southern Helmand Province.
Earlier this month, NATO acknowledged it had killed five Afghan civilians, including three women, during a botched night raid on a home in the southeast of the country in February.
The UN says new guidelines issued by the commander of NATO and US forces last year have helped reduce the number of civilian casualties, but such incidents still cause deep anger among Afghans the foreign troops are meant to protect. While the UN says foreign and Afghan troops killed 25 percent fewer civilians last year than in 2008, civilian deaths rose overall, because the number killed by insurgents rose 40 percent.
More than 2,400 civilians were killed last year, making it the deadliest year of a war now more than eight years old. There are some 130,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, set to rise to 150,000 by the year’s end.
Meanwhile, officials in neighboring Pakistan say 35 insurgents and two soldiers are dead after security forces repulsed militant attacks against two checkpoints in northwestern Pakistan.
Local administrator Samiullah Khan says the militants attacked the checkpoints in the Orakzai tribal area early yesterday with rockets and heavy gunfire. Three soldiers were also wounded.
Intelligence officials say authorities found 15 dead militants near the checkpoints in the villages of Shireen Dara and Sangrana. They say the insurgents removed the bodies of at least 20 others who were killed.
They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.
The army launched an offensive against the Pakistani Taliban in Orakzai last month.
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