Kabul - Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Thursday condemned
the reported killing of 17 civilians, including women and children,
in a US-led coalition operation in eastern Afghanistan, the
presidential palace said in a statement.
The US military said on Wednesday that their forces killed 32
Taliban insurgents, including an armed female militant, in an
operation that targeted a roadside bomb-making network in Alishing
district of Laghman province in eastern Afghanistan.
The military statement said that the combined forces fought the 75
militants barricaded in a compound with small-arms-fire, avoiding
air support and artillery fire in order to minimize the potential for
civilian deaths.
But a statement issued by Karzai's office said that besides
terrorists, '17 civilians including women and children were also
martyred in the operation.'
President Karzai condemned the incident and said, 'The Afghan
government has repeatedly made it clear that we want a quick end to
these kinds of incidents.'
Colonel Greg Julian, US military spokesman in Afghanistan, denied
there were any civilian deaths.
'We were very clear on that. There is clear evidence that there
was no civilian casualty,' he told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
Afghan government authorities and coalition military officials
often differ on numbers of civilians killed in international military
operations.
Afghan officials including Karzai repeated their assertion that 90
civilians - mostly children - were killed in a US-led airstrike in
Azizabad village in western Herat province in August 2008. The US
military finally accepted that around 30 civilians were killed after
insisting for weeks that the air raid only left around five civilians
dead.
Civilian casualties at the hands of international forces have
angered the Afghan public and has become a sensitive issue for the
government of Western-backed President Karzai.
Karzai has repeatedly warned that increasing civilian deaths would
erode public support for his government and would provoke
anti-foreigner sentiments in Afghanistan.
Several demonstration have been staged in Afghan cities and rural
areas to condemn the killing of civilians by foreign forces.
Unable to seek revenge independently, many Afghan men in southern
and eastern Afghanistan have joined the Taliban ranks after losing
members of their families in international military operations,
according to Afghan officials.
At least 1,500 civilians were among the 4,000 people killed in the
first eight months of 2008, according to United Nations officials in
Afghanistan.
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