NATO admits civilian deaths in east Afghanistan

by Samoon Miakhail Samoon Miakhail – Thu Aug 5, 2010, 1:07 pm ET

JALALABAD, Afghanistan (AFP) –

NATO on Thursday admitted killing a number of civilians during military operations in eastern Afghanistan after President Hamid Karzai launched a probe into the case.

During joint Afghan-NATO operations to hunt down a Taliban commander in a village in Nangarhar province, NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said troops came under fire and that civilians were killed in the ensuing fight.

"Following information received from provincial and local Nangarhar officials, it appears that between four and a dozen or more civilians were killed," ISAF spokesman Rear Admiral Greg Smith said in an emailed statement.

"Coalition forces deeply regret that our joint operation appears to have resulted in civilian loss of life and we express our sincerest condolences to the families," said Smith, adding that an investigation would be carried out with the Afghan government.

Karzai had ordered a probe after a district chief said a total of 26 people had been killed in two separate incidents in his area.

"Coalition forces had an operation last night. In one place, Nakrkhail village, they hit one vehicle and killed 12 civilians," said Mohammad Hassan, district chief of Khogyani district in Nangarhar.

Hassan said that 14 people were killed in another village, Hashimkhail, but that it was not clear how many insurgents and civilians were among the dead.

"There are some civilians among them," Hassan said.

Civilian casualties have become a critical issue in the nearly nine-year Afghan war and reducing the number of such incidents is seen as crucial to a US-led counter-insurgency strategy designed to end the conflict.

ISAF said its operations on Wednesday night were carried out not in Khogyani, but in neighbouring Sherzad district, but other details appeared to tally.

In Sherzad, ISAF said coalition forces had killed 15-20 insurgents, including two Taliban leaders, as well as the civilians.

Once the gun battle was over, the ground troops left the area while a team of soldiers in a helicopter above continued shooting to cover them, ISAF said.

President Karzai, who has urged Afghan and international forces to minimise civilian casualties, was saddened by the incident, a statement from his office said.

"The president who's currently in Iran is saddened over possible civilian casualties... and has ordered relevant authorities to urgently and broadly investigate this incident," the statement said.

It follows a conflict between Karzai and NATO over another incident in the Sangin district of Helmand province on July 23, in which the president alleges that coalition troops killed 39 civilians and left four injured.

NATO denies the incident took place.

Head of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus, has issued new rules to troops telling them to "redouble" efforts to avoid civilian deaths as they risked losing the battle to win Afghan hearts and minds.

On Wednesday, nine civilians travelling to collect voting cards were killed in volatile southern Helmand province when their vehicle struck an insurgent-placed roadside bomb, Karzai's office said.

Karzai "strongly condemned" the Taliban attack.

Also Thursday, a suicide attacker rammed a car bomb into a joint Afghan-NATO military convoy in northern Afghanistan, killing seven police and injuring five civilians, officials said.

In the capital Kabul, an improvised bomb exploded, hitting a police jeep, but there were no casualties, interior ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary said.

Cheap and easy to make, improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, are the most commonly used weapon by the Taliban, fighting an increasingly deadly insurgency focused mostly in the south and east of the country.

Afghanistan says 39 civilians died in disputed NATO attack

By Sayed Salahuddin  –

Thu Aug 5, 5:47 am ET

KABUL (Reuters) –

 Afghanistan's government says a new investigation shows 39 civilians, all women or children, were killed in a NATO rocket attack last month, fewer than first reported but dozens more than foreign forces have conceded.

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said it has been checking reports of civilian deaths since the government first said nearly two weeks ago that over 50 people had been killed by a rocket strike in southern Helmand province.

On Thursday, an ISAF spokesman, Lt. Raymond Jeffery, said he had no information about the result or progress of any probe and could not comment on the 39 deaths reported by President Hamid Karzai's office late on Wednesday.

ISAF previously said an initial assessment showed six people died in an incident in the area and at the time in question, and that a "majority" were insurgents.

Those killed in the rocket were civilians who had crammed in a house after fleeing a clash between the Taliban and joint Afghan and foreign forces, the Afghan presidential office said in its statement.

"Subsequently, one rocket hit the house in which 39 women and children were killed and four wounded," it said.

More than nine years after the ousting of the Taliban, civilian deaths caused by foreign forces are a major source of friction between Karzai and his Western backers, whose 150,000 troops are engaged in an increasingly bloody war with insurgents.

Scores of civilians have also been killed in Taliban attacks aimed at government and foreign forces in the past years.

The latest reports coincided with the publication last week by the whistleblower group WikiLeaks of tens of thousands of classified U.S. documents which cast a new light on operations by foreign forces and the plight of civilians.

WikiLeaks described a pattern with thousands of unreported civilian deaths in the near nine-year-old war.

(Editing by David Fox and Miral Fahmy)

NATO helicopter goes down in southern Afghanistan

Thu Aug 5, 2010, 7:04 am ET

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) –

 NATO forces say a Canadian helicopter has gone down in southern Afghanistan but no one was injured.

The craft went down Thursday afternoon in Kandahar province's Panjwai District, a volatile area under the command of Canadian forces. NATO forces spokesman Maj. Michael Johnson says the craft made a "hard landing" and then caught fire.

Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi claimed the insurgent group shot the craft down with a rocket. Johnson said the cause of the incident is being investigated and hostile fire has not been ruled out.

A shopkeeper said he heard a loud bang, then saw smoke and the helicopter falling into a field.

Johnson said the five crew members and five passengers have been recovered safely.

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) —

A suicide car bomber struck a convoy of NATO troops and Afghan police Thursday in northern Afghanistan, killing seven police officers and wounding at least 11 people.

The attack occurred in the early morning in Kunduz province's Imam Sahib district, according to an Interior Ministry statement. In addition to the deaths, six police and five civilians were wounded, the ministry said.

No NATO troops were killed in the bombing, said Maj. Michael Johnson, a NATO forces spokesman. He said some NATO forces were wounded, but declined to say how many or how seriously.

The vehicles were stopped in preparation of an operation in the area and the killed police officers had been standing outside of their trucks as they mobilized, said Abdul Rahman Aqtash, deputy police chief of Kunduz province

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid claimed responsibility for the attack in a text message to The Associated Press. The insurgent group regularly launches attacks against military forces or government workers as part of their campaign against the government.

Kunduz and other northern provinces have become increasingly violent in recent months as insurgent activity has spread into areas beyond the militants' longtime bases in the south and east of the country. This expansion of militant attacks has happened even as the U.S. and its allies are rushing thousands of reinforcements to try to turn back the Taliban. The focus of U.S. and NATO operations has been in the ethnic Pashtun south.

On Tuesday, New Zealand suffered its first combat death of the Afghan war during a Taliban ambush in one of Afghanistan's most peaceful areas — the central province of Bamiyan.