ISAF Assessing Civilian Casualty Allegations in Kunar Province

ISAF Joint Command - Afghanistan
2011-02-S-151
For Immediate Release

KABUL, Afghanistan (Feb. 20, 2011) —

The International Security Assistance Force, is sending an incident assessment team to look into allegations ISAF-caused civilian casualties during operations in Kunar province.

ISAF is aware of the Kunar provincial governor’s comments that coalition forces killed more than 50 civilians during operations in the province over the past several days.

“We take allegations of civilian casualties very seriously. We are conducting an immediate assessment of these allegations and will report our findings,” said U.S. Army Col. Patrick Hynes ISAF Joint Command Combined Joint Operations Center director.

ISAF reporting and weapons system video shows 36 insurgents (a NATO reference to Taliban fighters), who were carrying weapons, were killed. This operation took place in a very remote valley in Kunar province, over very rugged terrain in the late night/early morning hours.

NATO probes claims it killed 64 Afghan civilians

By Rahim Faiez, Associated Press –

Sunday, February 20, 2011

KABUL, Afghanistan –

NATO dispatched a team of investigators to a remote area of northeast Afghanistan on Sunday to look into claims that coalition forces killed 64 civilians there in recent air and ground strikes.

Gen. Khalilullah Ziayi, police chief of Kunar province, said 15 men, 20 women and 29 children or young adults were killed during operations in Ghazi Abad district in the past four days. Kunar provincial governor, Fazlullah Wahidi, also said that 64 civilians were killed.

NATO said video of the operations in Kunar show coalition troops targeting and killing 36 armed (Taliban fighters referred to by AP as "insurgents") in a remote, rugged valley.

"We take allegations of civilian casualties very seriously," U.S. Army Col. Patrick Hynes, director of NATO's operations center, said in a statement. "We are conducting an immediate assessment of these allegations and will report our findings."

Civilians casualties have surged in recent months as insurgents have stepped up attacks.

A recent United Nations report said it documented 2,412 conflict-related civilian casualties in the first 10 months of 2010. More than three-quarters of them were caused by militant activity, a 25 percent increase from the same period in 2009, the report said. At the same time, civilian casualties attributed to pro-government forces decreased.

Dr. Asadullah Fazeli, public health director of Kunar province, said eight civilians — one man, three women and four children — were being treated for injuries received during operations in the district at a hospital in the provincial capital of Asadabad. Some were being treated for shrapnel wounds, he said.

Fazeli said local officials had asked the International Committee for the Red Cross for assistance.

Also on Sunday, the Afghan government said that a brazen attack a day earlier in which five suicide bombers stormed a bank in eastern Afghanistan and killed 38 people indicated insurgents are increasingly going after "soft targets."

The bombers, all dressed in security force uniforms, attacked a Kabul Bank branch in Jalalabad on Saturday just as many members of the Afghan security forces were collecting their pay.

"Unfortunately, we see that there's a change of tactic in the terrorist attacks and they are targeting soft targets" — places that are not heavily barricaded and fortified like government buildings or military compounds, Interior Ministry spokesman Zemeri Bashary told reporters at a news conference in Kabul.

He noted that two recent attacks in the capital also reflected the tactical change. In one, a suicide bomber attacked an upscale supermarket in Kabul on Jan. 28, killing eight civilians; in the second, a bomber attacked a Western-style shopping mall on Feb. 14, killing two security guards.

"In these kind of places — like City Center in Kabul and Kabul Bank in Jalalabad — these are all areas where mostly people are going to do daily business," Bashary said.

"No one would expect that they would attack such places like a bank or shopping mall," he said.

Among those killed in Saturday's attack in Jalalabad were 21 members of the Afghan national security forces, including 13 policemen and seven soldiers. The other 17 killed were civilians.

A total of 71 people, mostly civilians, were wounded, he said.

"Five armed suicide bombers entered the Kabul Bank building and started shooting," Bashary said. "The incident happened while Afghan security forces were there to get their monthly salaries. That is why the casualties were so high."

Since no one is allowed inside the bank with weapons, none of the Afghan policemen or soldiers collecting their pay had weapons to defend themselves.

He said bank guards tried to prevent the militants from entering the building. A gunbattle broke out between the guards and the militants, who were all wearing suicide vests. During the fight, four of the attackers were killed and their suicide vests detonated. The fifth suicide attacker — a man from North Waziristan in Pakistan — was arrested and his vest was defused, Bashary said.

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Associated Press writer Deb Riechmann contributed to this report.

French soldier killed in Afghanistan

Play Video Afghanistan Video:Dozens of Afghan civilians wounded Reuters Afghanistan

Video:Australian soldier killed in Afghanistan Australia 7 News Play

Video Afghanistan Video:Inside the surge in Afghanistan Reuters

– Sun Feb 20, 5:41 am ET

PARIS (AFP) –

A French soldier serving with the NATO-led international coalition in Afghanistan was killed in an attack by Taliban fighters (who are referred to by AFP as "insurgents") at the weekend, the president's office announced Sunday.

He was the 54th French serviceman to die in Afghanistan since the first deployment of international forces in 2001, it said.

The attack happened Saturday in the early evening in the Alasay valley in Kapisa province in the northeast of the country.

A column of armoured vehicles was attacked by insurgents, the office said in a communique.

Two other soldiers were wounded in the attack, one critically.

President Nicolas Sarkozy has sent his condolences to the family and friends of the dead soldier, the communique said.

Around 4,000 French soldiers are currently deployed as part of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, which numbers around 150,000.

So far this year 53 soldiers, two of them French, have been killed.

A record 711 foreign troops died in the country in 2010, making it the deadliest year for them since a US-led invasion toppled the hardline Taliban regime in late 2001.