At least 85 civilians were killed by a NATO air strike in a
village of the southern Kandahar province of Afghanistan, an Afghan
official and a witness told Xinhua on Thursday.
Bismillah Afghanmal, a member of the provincial council of
Kandahar, said a NATO air strike killed 85 civilians including
women and children on Tuesday night in Nangawat village in Panjwai
district of the province.
He said there was no information of Taliban casualties in the
bombardment.
Meanwhile, Ghulam Hasan, a villager from Nangawat, said about 90
civilians were killed and several injured in the NATO bombing.
Fifty civilian bodies had been dug out from the rubble until
Wednesday, he added.
According to locals, 20 injured civilians from Panjwai district
have been taken to Mir Wais hospital in Kandahar city, the
provincial capital. But doctors in the hospital reached by Xinhua
declined to make comment on the issue.
The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) has
a different saying on the matter.
In a statement issued on Wednesday, ISAF said the troops killed
48 insurgents in Panjwai and the neighboring Zhari district on
Tuesday.
However, it admitted "ISAF has since received credible reports
that there were a number of civilian casualties including women and
children" arising from the conflicts.
The statement said ISAF could confirm four civilians were
injured by ISAF firing and had been taken to hospital.
"ISAF has been informed that the Afghan Ministry of Defense is
sending a delegation to the region to investigate these incidents
and ISAF will fully cooperate with this investigation," it
added.
Zhari and Panjwai districts, about 40 km west of Kandahar city
is the birthplace of the fundamentalist Taliban movement and has
been a stronghold of Taliban militants.
The two districts were also the focus of a major ISAF military
operation in September named Operation Medusa, during which ISAF
said at least 500 Taliban insurgents were killed.
Meantime, in a statement released on Thursday, the UN Assistance
Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said it "is very concerned by
reports that a great number of civilians may have died during the
conduct of military operations" in Nangawat village.
"The United Nations has always made clear that the safety and
welfare of civilians must always come first and any civilian
casualties are unacceptable," it added.
Foreign military actions have caused civilian casualties in
Afghanistan from time to time.
The US-led coalition forces killed seven civilians in an
operation in the eastern Kunar province in April.
The previous worst incident of civilian deaths happened in July
2002, when a US air strike in the southern Uruzgan province killed
48 civilians and wounded 117 others, many of them celebrating at a
wedding party.
(Xinhua News Agency October 27, 2006)
